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Cal didn’t visit the graves often. His closeness to their occupants had always felt presumptuous of him, even when they’d been alive. He already had four parents; was it selfish of him to seek out two more? Now that they were dead, and he was standing in their shoes… He wasn’t keen on untangling that knot anytime soon.
But Sol had been moping by his parents’ graves for hours now. The binary suns were nearing the horizon, casting the already orange Dust landscape in an even more golden orange light. It was the day after Vertumnalia, and theoretically the two of them were supposed to be meeting to discuss Sol’s new position as Second Cultivator under Cal. Cal didn’t really care about Lum’s bureaucratic nonsense, but he did care about his boyfriend, so he swallowed his apprehensions and unceremoniously plopped his ass down in the dirt next to him.
“Kudo for your thoughts?” Cal said.
Sol turned to him with a soft smile tugging at his lips. “Hey, babe,” he said. “Nothing much, just thinking about them.”
Cal joined Sol in regarding the memorial site. There were no headstones or markers or anything of the sort – only a small mound of upturned terrain marking where their disintegrated remains had been interred in accordance with Vertumnan tradition. Cal knew that as cultivators, they wouldn’t have wanted anything else. They would have been honored for their legacy to be the enrichment of the alien land to which they’d dedicated their lives. But it struck Cal as somehow wrong, the way two people as fundamental as Auntie Flulu and Uncle Geranium had been reduced to anonymous lumps in the ground.
Sol felt the same way, Cal knew – today he noticed a delicate white flower laid in between the two graves, its petals fluttering softly in the evening air.
“That’s new,” Cal said. “It’s a white astrantia, right? Like in your mom’s Earth garden?”
Sol nodded. There was something tender on his face that wasn’t quite a smile. “She gave me one for my birthday a while ago – I must have been, like, 12. She didn’t say it, but I think she wanted me to give it to someone I liked, you know, romantically. I never got around to it before she died.” His calloused hand found Cal’s bicep and squeezed it. “Probably because I’d already figured out that the key to your heart was baked goods.”
Cal chuckled – that was true after all – and the two settled into a comfortable, contemplative silence. Sol leaned his head into the crook of Cal’s shoulder and let Cal hold him close.
It was Sol who broke the silence. “What do you think they’d think?”
“Of what?”
“Of… everything. The state of the colony. The two of us leading Geoponics. The two of us, in general.”
Cal didn’t say that Sol would know better than him, because they both knew that wasn’t quite as true as either cared to admit. Instead, he muttered, “Well, I definitely don’t think they would have supported that fascist Lum’s war on the xenos. Your mom, especially – she was a tough lady. She wouldn’t have taken any of his bullshit.”
“No, she wouldn’t have,” Sol agreed wistfully. Cal noticed he was staring intently at the astrantia he had laid there.
“As for our relationship,” Cal continued, “they definitely would’ve been happy. Hell, I think they realized I was in love with you sooner’n I did. I remember, when it was just me and your mom out in the fields, she’d pull me aside and tell me all about your interests, your favorite foods…”
Sol cast a teasing expression at Cal. “Wow, and that didn’t scare you off? I’m impressed.”
Cal snorted. “Well, looking back,” he said, “she also definitely threatened to make me suffer if I ever hurt you, so maybe my sense of danger’s as nonexistent as my sense of temperature.” He grinned at Sol cheekily.
He’d hoped to maintain the lighter mood, but instead Sol went right back to his staring contest with the graves. Wistfully, he said, “Yeah, that sounds like Mom.” And then, quieter: “I wish she’d been around to see this. I wish they were both still around to see this.”
“…Yeah, me too.” Cal rubbed soothing circles on Sol’s back. It was noticeably tense – especially considering his boyfriend was genetically resistant to stress. He tried to project all his love and care directly from his hand into Sol’s body, but the tension didn’t ease.
“Isn’t it fucked up?” Sol said.
“What’s fucked up?”
Sol lifted himself up, eliciting a protesting whine from Cal, and gestured around them. “All of this! Why are we the ones who have to lead Geoponics? You’ve been Chief Cultivator since you were 17 – you’ve told me how tough that’s been. I’m Second Cultivator and I’m not even 20 yet! We’re basically just kids!”
Cal summoned the period after Uncle Geranium had died in his memory – or tried to. It had been a dark time, and he really only recalled it in flashes: constant dread that Socks would somehow be discovered amid the chaos; multiple failed attempts to coax Sol out of his room; desperate entreatments from his mom and dads and Tammy and even Anemone to slow down; the grim faces of the Council the first time he joined them as the newly christened Chief Cultivator. “Someone had to step up,” he heard himself say.
Sol crossed his arms. “And why’d that someone have to be you?”
“Well, uh, actually...” Sol’s expression turned quizzical, and Cal regretted opening his mouth, because that meant he now had to finish vocalizing that thought. He felt compelled to barrel forward. “It’s just… I think a lot of folks wanted you to lead Geoponics after your dad, uh… passed.” Unconsciously, he rubbed the spot on his upper arm where, three years ago, he’d received his inoculation against the Shimmer – a cure that had only become possible with the data gathered from Geranium’s death. “But, I mean, obviously you were in a rough state, and no one wanted to put more on your shoulders, so… yeah.”
“...Oh. Sorry.”
Cal could have kicked himself. “Aw, shucks, don’t apologize! You were 16 and mourning – no one should have expected you to step up like that!”
“Yeah, like you being 17 was any better? And, jeez, Cal, don’t act like you weren’t affected by their deaths too. They should have given you just as much time to grieve. Don’t do my parents the disservice of pretending you were able to move on that easily.” There was a charged silence.
“I wanted to do right by them,” Cal said quietly.
“It’s not like you had to become Chief Cultivator to do that. It’s not like we’re the only people who could have possibly led Geoponics – there are plenty of actual adults who could’ve taken over. It wasn’t right of them to put that on your shoulders.” Sol paused, then chuckled without humor. “I mean. I know why they actually did it – they’ve always had it in their heads that you and me, we’re like the next-generation models of my parents. You know, the buff farmer and the botany expert, right? Like Mom and Dad never died.”
Cal should have been flattered that his boyfriend had just called him buff, but instead his mind flashed to something that had happened the previous day, during Vertumnalia. One of his cultivators – Pandiculate, their name was – had come up to him after the new second officers had been announced. Pan had joked that if Cal buzzed off his hair, and Sol grew a beard, it would basically be like Flulu and Geranium had never left. They’d said it like it was funny.
Cal did think Sol would look great with a beard, but otherwise he didn’t find that funny at all, and he didn’t think Sol would either. It wasn’t like he couldn’t see the similarities between the two of them and Sol’s parents – they were uncanny in some ways – but they filled him with churning unease. He didn’t want to be the second coming of Flulu and Geranium. He didn’t want to take more from them than they’d already given him. Why couldn’t they just be Cal and Sol and have that be enough?
He opened his mouth to commiserate, but by then Sol was speaking again, now accompanied by restless pacing. “I hate what it implies. Like, ‘It doesn’t matter that they’re gone, because now we have good ol’ Cal and Sol to replace them!’ And I just… I just… they should still be here, you know?”
“They should,” Cal agreed sadly.
“They should still be here,” Sol repeated. “I should’ve been able to save them! Why couldn’t I save them?!”
Oh shit. Cal sprang to his feet. “Whoa, hey, hey, don’t blame yourself!” He locked eyes with Sol. “There was nothing any of us could’ve done.”
To Cal’s alarm, frustrated tears welled in Sol’s eyes. “Wasn’t there? I saved Uncle Tonin, I saved Professor Hal, why couldn’t I have done something to save them too?” He tore his gaze from Cal and cast a bitter expression at the Geoponics domes. “Maybe Mom would still be alive if I’d actually gone on more foraging expeditions instead of hiding in the botany lab like a coward…”
Cal shook his head. “Hey, no. You don’t get to disparage yourself like that. I never went on any expeditions. Neither did your parents. We were all busy working our asses off in Geoponics, just like you were. That doesn’t make us cowards, does it? And,” he continued, “your gene-spliced food is probably the only reason any of us survived the famine at all! And no one could blame you for not going on anymore foraging missions after what happened during your last one. You were in medbay for a week!”
He had meant it as comfort, as encouragement, but clearly it had the opposite effect. Sol flinched sharply. “You know what, Dad probably should’ve blamed me for that one too,” he said. “He’d be right to – I was right in the middle of all that Shimmer and I was too stupid to take a damn sample!”
Cal could tell his boyfriend was spiraling, so he reached out and laid a firm hand on either shoulder. “Sol. Listen to me. It messed with your head, just like it messed with his head. You don’t blame him for going out and inhaling the stuff every Pollen, do you? No, of course not. So why the hell would he blame you?”
Sol stared at Cal as if he’d just informed him that Lum was actually right about everything. And then his legs wobbled, and he unceremoniously collapsed into Cal’s embrace, silently sobbing. Cal held on tightly. He’d been unofficially dethroned from his position as the colony’s best hugger now that Rex was around, but he still gave damn good hugs if he did say so himself. After an eternity spent like that, Sol sniffled, muttering, “I just miss them, you know?”
“I know,” Cal said. “I do too.”
The outside world faded away as they stood there like that, but eventually Sol extricated himself from Cal’s clutches. His eyes were red but dry, and he gave Cal a smile that Cal could tell was fragile as glass. “Sorry. I thought I’d gotten all that out of my system years ago. Guess all this Second Cultivator stuff is really dredging up old memories.”
Privately, he thought Sol’s enhancement was a burden on his boyfriend rather than a boon when it came to emotional stuff. It was true that Sol didn’t get stressed like other people did, but that didn’t mean the stress wasn’t there. It was the same as with Cal and temperature – even if Sol wasn’t aware of it, it kept building and building until it became overwhelming. Cal couldn't find the words to express this, so instead he settled for a simple, “You don’t need to apologize.”
Sol shrugged wordlessly, which Cal took as an improvement. “Cal?” he said softly.
“Yeah?”
“Promise me we won’t end up like them. They died so you and I and the rest of us could live – so promise me we’ll live. I want to see the future we end up building, I want you to see it with me. Promise me we’ll grow old together, Cal.”
Cal gently patted Sol, his mouth dry all of a sudden. “I promise,” he said. He meant it.
They drifted back in the direction of Living Quarters from there, neither quite sure what to say but not ready to part for the night. Cal allowed himself one look back at the unmarked graves, at the lonely astrantia whose petals now rested peaceful and still. Beneath that flower was what little remained of Sol’s parents, who’d given everything to nourish a future they’d never see. Cal resolved – for Sol’s sake, for their sakes, for his own – to take advantage of the fertile soil they’d left behind.