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"Eugene."
"Hmm?"
"Wake up."
Eugene groans and pulls a pillow around the side of his head where Vincent's voice is interrupting his sleep. It's midnight and he's exhausted. Thirteen hours ago he'd rolled over to the heavy entry way door to welcome an ecstatic and rambling Vincent. He'd be lying if he said he didn't miss the man or think of him everyday for the twelve months he was away on Titan.
He'd gotten a hug for his troubles and the pleasure of watching Vincent's face brighten with every story. Somehow he always found himself wanting more than Vincent could give - a farewell kiss rather than blood and hair samples. A kiss upon Vincent's return and a fervent I missed you but he'd given up on wanting what he couldn't have after his suicide attempt had failed. Who would want such a broken man? A paperweight, a self inflicted invalid with nothing more than genetically perfected blue eyes to offer.
"Go away."
"No."
"Bed," Eugene orders.
To his surprise, the mattress dips as Vincent slides in next to him.
"Not my bed."
Vincent ignores him and burrows under a thick layer of gray and white covers. How's he supposed to sleep now?
A certain lovable but annoying prick of a roommate plucks the pillow from his head and stuffs it under his own as if it and everything on the bed now belongs to him.
"Mine is all the way upstairs, I'm tired."
"It's after midnight, Vincent."
He should've already been asleep and in his own room rather than helping himself to the right side of the bed. Eugene had forgotten how frustrating living with another person could be, especially when they're everything you'll never have. Not the medal or even a future aboard Gattaca's finest shuttle, no. He wants this and the longer Victor lies there, the deeper the pain digs into Eugene's heart.
"I know...but I forgot to do something. Say something."
Eugene swings his heavy legs in Vincent's direction and maneuvers himself to a half sitting, half lying position. His face is blurry in the semi darkness.
"Can it not wait until tomorrow?"
Vincent sighs and stares down at his hands. He hasn't came off as nervous or small in a long time - since he'd taken Eugene's identity, in fact. And yet, this version before him isn't a fabrication or the result of clever physical manipulation.
This is Vincent Freeman, the invalid with such a love for space that it consumed his life, the person who burns coffee in the mornings and had to have his legs stretched due to a spontaneous genetic predisposition for stunted growth.
"I forgot to say goodbye," he murmurs.
Eugene remembers their tense farewell beside of a refrigerator stocked with the necessary items needed for Vincent to continue living a false life. His heartbeat, however, he'd kept. He'd wanted to share it with Vincent, say This is how much I care. Here. Here is my life, here is the heart I'll no longer need when you're gone.
He'd put his own selfish wants last instead. He'd sat inside of the incinerator for hours afterward, arguing with himself about the bridge between life and death - whether his own passing would make a dent in the world or leave it polished without so much as a smudge.
In the end it had been the thought of Vincent's disappointment that had given him the strength to lift himself up and out, to live.
"You did," he corrects.
Was it such a lackluster farewell that Vincent had wiped it from his memory?
Vincent shakes his head. "No, not in the right way. Not like Vincent Freeman would've."
Eugene's heart pounds harder. "And how is that?"
He remembers taking Vincent to dinner multiple times, recalls verbally teaching him how to dance (and how much he'd enjoyed the show). He hasn't forgotten the few occasions they'd gotten drunk together and at least once where Eugene had tugged Vincent down by his tie.
He'd recognized it then, the unmistakable feeling he thought he'd lost long ago. It would've been so easy to take.
Vincent would've melted in his arms and-
And then he would leave.
But that was then and this is a rare second chance. The siren call of Titan no longer haunts Vincent and if they try at this, if they really try-
"Like this."
Vincent moves as if he's dancing and his partners body is a journey that he doesn't have a map for but follows anyway. He takes a pale hand in his own and kisses each knuckle before moving onto brush a kiss along blue veins on Eugene's inner wrist. The blood within once fed into Vincent's body and breathed life into his dreams.
Eugene's breath catches but he says nothing.
His eyes follow Vincent's every movement as if to prove that he's not actually dreaming and hadn't, in fact, taken up heavy drinking again.
Vincent's fingers clumsily unbutton a silk pajama top and he leaves a kiss there too, right over the heart. He presses his ear against it - tha-thump. Tha-thump. It beats harder with every touch.
Eugene had once recorded it for Vincent's physical but what he didn't know was that Vincent had held onto the recording. It sounds just as strong and beautiful as it had then. He's alive and they're in this bed together, this life.
Eugene holds on tightly to the covers. If he were to let go, well. He'd never let go.
Vincent continues his unabashed exploration by running his trembling fingers through dirty blonde hair. He has never been Jerome Morrow, not even close. No one could ever replace this man.
Eugene's eyes flutter closed when a hand rests on his hipbone.
He fights the urge to fling it off and yell until Vincent walks away and never returns.
Eugene is life's own sick joke - a man tries to die and only succeeds in a drawn out death by his own hand. His head isn't what it should be and, though he may have flawless DNA, he is far from perfection. But Vincent makes him want to live despite it all.
Vincent pulls the covers away and marvels, adores.
He kisses the edge of a sharp hipbone and notices how tense Eugene is holding himself.
Carefully, he takes a balled up fist and pries the fingers open, plants it on the soft fabric of his t-shirt. He's touch starved after a full year on Titan. He'd dreamed of thousands of moments nearly identical until he'd ached.
Eugene opens his mouth to speak but a breathy sigh comes out instead of words.
Has he ever been this happy?
He can't remember. Most of his memories these days are colored with Vincent's presence and make him dream of something more. He couldn't have predicted how good it'd feel to fall apart in Vincent's arms, how safe.
This touch in particular says I see your scars and I love you not in spite of them but because they're a part of you. You're never my second choice, always the first. Always.
He could die a happy man with those unspoken words on his heart.
Vincent kisses his way to his neck and the dam walls collapse in the wake of white hot need. Eugene drags Vincent's face toward his own and hungrily opens his mouth - Take everything I am. Take this chaos inside my head and fill it with you, he thinks.
Vincent may not be wearing an expensive tie this time but that doesn't stop him from reaching up and urging him down by his shirt. His weight covers Eugene like a blanket and this must be how the earth feels under a cover of freshly fallen snow. It's heavy in a way that makes his hands settle on Vincent's waist.
Bury me in you, he thinks.
He wants to wake up in the morning with Vincent's touch on every inch of skin - it's the only thing that matters. In a society where perfection is lab created, they have found the loophole.
Vincent smiles against his lips. He'll never have to scrub that touch from his skin - he released Jerome Morrow when he walked out of that shuttle and only Vincent Freeman remains. There's no need to pool resources and plasma, urine and heartbeat.
A thousand years from now he'd know Eugene by touch alone even in the darkest of nights.
Eugene is leaning in for one more kiss when Vincent leaves it on his forehead instead. How cruel.
"How was that?," he whispers.
"I'm going to need a reunion kiss as well," Eugene murmurs with fingers tracing the outline of Vincent's kiss-red lips.
"And a kiss for the first time we met," Vincent adds.
"Don't forget Boxing Day and Christmas."
Eugene smiles, love-drunk.
"Halloween and..."
Tomorrow will find them tangled together with sweaty bodies and proof that, though fate may not exist, it's never too late to allow the human heart to write its own story.