Archive of Our Own

For the past fifteen minutes of the social interaction, Neptune had been slowly but surely backing away.

Not that it wasn’t nice to hang out with the other planets. Neptune liked that part. It was just a little… loud. And hot. And bright. Especially compared to my orbit.

Still, he liked hearing other voices, and watching the other planets interact. He liked being included, even if he wasn’t really sure how conversation worked or when was a good time to jump in. 

Uranus won’t mind if I take a breather, Neptune thought, inching away step by step. Uranus is nice like that.

On pure muscle memory, he turned to count his moons and faltered when they weren’t there. His smile dropped for a millisecond. Had he lost them again? Then he caught sight of the asteroid belt in the corner of his visions, and a fuzzy memory floated back into existence. Right. The moon club. That’s why Saturn dragged Uranus and me out in the first place.

Well, it was nice that his moons got to hang out with celestials their size. Neptune still felt weird not being able to count them though. Instead, he counted the planets. Six. Seven if he counted himself, which didn’t seem right. He was decently sure there were supposed to be eight in total. So then who was missing?

All four giants were accounted for. That left the smaller rocky planets, which… yes, there were only three of them. One of them wasn’t here.

Neptune blinked, furrowing his brow. Which one?

He mentally fumbled at the blank spot in his mind. He couldn’t place the name immediately, but he did know they had a radius of 6,371 kilometres, which meant they were the biggest rocky planet—

Oh right! Terra!

A quick spin around and— yup! Spotted him. Sat in his orbit in the inner solar system.

Neptune should probably go say hi, right? Uranus brought him to socialise, after all. And it was probably a lot quieter in Terra’s orbit than here.

He slipped away mostly unnoticed, although Jupiter sensed his retreating mass and sent him a questioning glance. A wide smile and a thumbs up seemed to dispel whatever worries the larger giant might’ve had, because Jupiter turned his attention back to the rockies right when the smallest let out a high pitched shriek.

Neptune hid a wince with a smile and backed up into the asteroid belt until the noise was no longer giving him the urge to cover his ears. Somehow, the water world hadn't noticed him or his greater gravity.

Hmm. Well, he should let Terra know he was here.

“Hello!”

“Gah!” Terra spun around quickly on his axis. “What— oh. Hi, Neptune?” 

“That’s me!” Neptune confirmed, since Terra sounded a little confused about his name.. “What’s up with you, Terra?”

“Uh, nothing really… and you can just call me Earth, you know.”

“Oh!” Neptune furrowed his brow. He thought he was doing pretty good at names. He vaguely remembered when Terra—Earth first formed. Didn’t he call himself… “Sorry, I thought your name was—“

“I mean, it is.” Terr- Earth jumped in to correct. “But like, so is Gaia, Geb, Panchamama, Jörd… and, like, so many others.” The living world awkwardly rubbed the back of his neck. “But, you know. Everyone calls me Earth, so…”

Neptune would have to remember that, then. People didn’t really like it when others got their name wrong. It’s why he’d been putting such an effort into pronouncing Uranus’ name correctly and coughing loudly when the other planets slipped up.

He didn’t really trust himself to just remember Earth off the bat, so he wracked his mind for a way to remember it quicker. Hm. I guess the letter ‘E’ looks like an inverted ‘3’, and Earth is the third planet from Sun. 

Yep. That should help.

Neptune then realised he hadn’t actually said anything for a while and was just staring at Earth. 

The living planet cleared his throat. “Uh… should you even be here? Not that I don’t want you here!” He hurriedly corrected himself. “But like, isn’t my orbit too hot for you?”

“Meh,” Neptune shrugged, pulling his scarf a little looser. “A little. But I should be fine for a bit. It’s not like I’m trapped here after all!”

“Yeah, yeah I guess…” Earth trailed off and fidgeted in place.

Neptune realised he may have been maintaining eye contact for an uncomfortably long time. He forced his eyes away to look around, and noticed a book floating idly in the smaller’s gravity. He probably wouldn’t have paid much attention, except he saw numbers on the cover and his interest was piqued.

“Ooh, what’s that?” Neptune pointed.

Earth made a questioning noise and followed Neptune’s finger. “Oh. I got bored. Tried to do some sudoku to pass the time.” The rocky planet rubbed the back of his neck as if it were something embarrassing.

“Sudoku?” Neptune echoed. “Is that a math thing?”

“Uhh… do you like math?”

Neptune looked up and nodded, biting his tongue as his first impulse was to start blabbering about some of the equations he had figured out in his orbit, but he had a feeling Earth might not appreciate that. Not everyone liked math as much as he did.

Earth pulled the book out of orbit, flicking through it while talking. “It’s more of a logic puzzle than math, but it does have numbers so um… technically? I think…” he trailed off and cleared his throat. “Would you like to learn how to play?”

“Yes!” Neptune liked numbers after all. And it was quieter here. He folded his legs up beneath him and leaned forward, attentive.

“It’s actually meant to be a one person game,” Earth explained, showing him the contents of the pages. A grid with a seemingly random scattering of numbers going from one to nine. Neptune felt himself perk up even more. “I can teach you the basics— you’ll probably pick it up fast anyway— and then I can give it to you for you to do in your orbit?”

Neptune tapped his fingers together excitedly, and nodded.

A few hours later he was settled back in his orbit, dozing moons floating around him and falling into a pleasant focus as he completed Earthling puzzle after Earthling puzzle. It was fun. He should start visiting Terra more often.

Earth knew that the others didn’t mean to leave him alone. It’s just how things turned out sometimes.

Jupiter and Saturn were making an effort to include the ice giants more. Earth didn’t know all the details but he got the vibe they were trying to make up for lost time. Since Jupiter usually kept the Asteroid Belt in check, they all would typically hang out in the largest’s orbit. Fair enough.

Then, Mars would want to cross over to go see what they were talking about. Then Venus, then Mercury. I don’t know, dude. It’s kind of nice. Mars said to him one time. It’s kind of like how it used to be in the early solar system. 

Yeah, it would be nice. Earth was glad everyone was making an effort. He wanted to join in too.

But he couldn’t leave the Goldilocks Zone.

Sure, the others couldn’t permanently leave their orbits without causing some sort of gravitational instability (or at least without developing orbital sickness which no one wanted to deal with), but they could still leave. 

Earth couldn’t. Not really. Not without risking fucking up some sort of delicate cycle that Life needed to survive. The extent of his ability to roam was the Asteroid Belt in short quick trips, and even that usually left him shivering and stiff for days afterwards. 

It was fine, really. He still played cards with the other rockies all the time, and occasionally chatted with Jupiter. They weren’t purposely leaving him out, not at all.

A sliver of doubt brushed across his mind. He brushed it away. Besides, usually he just hung out with Luna when everyone went to Jupiter’s orbit.

…except sometimes moon club would be happening at the same time. Or Luna would be late because he lost track of time talking to the other moons.

Which is good. Earth told himself firmly. It’s good that Luna has other friends. It’s probably healthy that we learn how to spend time apart.

This was just an adjustment period. It was difficult to suddenly be separated from someone who had been at your side for the better part of four and a half billion years. Well. It was difficult for Earth at least. Luna seemed to barely have a problem with it. Maybe Earth was just being selfish again and that’s why his moon was so eager to leave—

No, no, no. Stop that. Luna will come back, he always comes back, Earth told himself, even as doubt and anxiety tightened around his core like a boa constrictor.

Basically, everyone could leave their orbit except for Earth. He especially couldn’t leave his orbit today. A soft, dull throb emanated from his mantle, threatening to become a full-blown migraine if he pushed himself too hard.

Earth folded his legs underneath himself and slumped, resigning himself to a few hours of boredom. 

“Hello again!” 

Earth managed not to shriek this time, but he did jump considerably high, spinning around while his core hammered. “Neptune?” How the hell does he keep sneaking up behind me!? “Uh— hi! What are…”

The dark blue ice giant grinned. “I finished the book you gave me. It was fun.”

He handed Earth the sudoku book. Earth flipped through a couple of pages. Sure enough, all the puzzles were filled. Impressive. I didn’t expect him to complete it so fast. This is a pretty thick book.

“Huh. I can give you another, then. Maybe a couple actually.” If the ice giant was going to go through them so fast, he'd need quite a few. Earth hummed to himself. Wasn’t there also those ones with twelve by twelve grids? Neptune could give those a try if he got bored of the normal ones.

He materialised a small collection into his hand, then— ow. He dropped the books to orbit in his gravity with a hiss as the throbbing in his head levelled up into pounding. Ow ow ow.

The bigger source of gravity moved closer. A worried, painfully loud voice. “Are you okay?”

Earth held out a hand, other hand still cradled his head and backed up a little. “Sorry, sorry. Just— headache.” He managed through gritted teeth. “Need a minute.”

Thankfully, the pounding lessened and lifted, allowing Earth to bring the world back into focus. The blue ice giant hovered in front of him, blinking frogishly.

“That was— um… sorry,” Earth repeated, suddenly embarrassed. He pushed the books out of his gravity and into Neptune’s. “Here.” 

The ice giant grabbed them and pulled them against his chest, but didn’t move. He his head at the smaller planet, expression unreadable. “That didn’t look very good.”

“It’s not like it felt good either.” The words came out angrier than he intended and Earth felt a familiar wave of self loathing run through him. Great, now I’m being mean to Neptune. 

“Oh… sorry.” Was Earth imaging the hurt in his voice? “I can leave.”

Earth shook his head. “You don’t have to.” He took a deep breath in, then let it out slowly. He was slightly frustrated that it actually did calm him down a little. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to snap at you. You really don’t have to leave.”

Neptune shifted his weight back and forth, but seemed to decide to stick around. Earth tried to ignore the sense of relief he got from that. 

He felt the giant’s gravity as he settled down a little ways away from Earth. They both sat in silence for a bit. It was incredibly awkward, but Earth couldn’t help but feel grateful. His head still pulsed with the threat of another wave.

“You were right about the puzzle not being like normal math,” Neptune said suddenly in a conversational, but quiet, tone. “But I still liked it. It was fun to figure it all out.”

“Yeah, no there’s plenty of sudoku. You can always come find me if you want more. I think there’s like, a million combinations or something.”

“Six point six seven one times ten to the power of twenty one,” Neptune supplied. “Or over six and a half sextillion possible combinations.”

“Huh.” Earth blinked. “Guess you’re not going to run out any time soon then.”

“This is for you.” Earth shoved something into Neptune's hands the third time he came to visit. “I thought you’d like it.”

Neptune brought it closer to inspect. A cube with different colours on the faces. “Ooh. It’s a very nice cube. Thank you!” 

“It’s another puzzle. A Rubix cube. See?” Earth materialised his own and demonstrated how to move the bright squares around until it was all mixed up. “The point is to arrange the sides until they’re each one colour again.”

“Ohhh. I see.” Neptune turned the faces a few times, seeing how the colours mixed up.

“That one also lights up,” Earth continued excitedly. “So you can see the colours more clearly in your orbit.”

The rocky planet demonstrated how to turn it on, and Neptune flapped his hands excitedly.

At some point it became a sort of routine. When the giants all gathered just beyond the Asteroid belt, and Neptune eventually stepped away because it got too loud, or crowded, he’d slip away to the Goldilocks Zone for a chat and to pick up some new games to do in his orbit.

Sudoku was still a favourite, so Earth had a backlog of puzzle books to exchange with the ice giant at the end of every visit. 

Earth tried to teach Neptune some cards, but the ice giant was unfortunately good at maths. He picked it up quickly, and Earth lost every single game because Neptune was somehow counting the cards.

Anyway, it wasn’t as fun as when he played with Mars, mostly because neither of them really knew what they were doing so they just made it up as they went along. That was fine, he had other games he could try with Neptune.

A small, familiar gravity clicked into place. Oh, Luna’s back. Was moon club already finished? He’d barely noticed the time passing. This is a nice change.

“Was that Neptune?” Luna asked, floating up next to Earth.

“Yeah, he’s been stopping by for a while.” Earth said. “Did you know he’s a maths whizz? It’s kind of terrifying.”

Luna shrugged. “I mean, I think Triton mentioned—“

“Should I introduce Neptune to gambling?”

Luna sharply turned to him. “What? No.”

“Gambling is mostly probability. If I taught him the rules he’d be unstoppable.” Earth rambled to himself, tapping his chin. 

“Earth, we don’t even have currency. What the hell would we gamble?”

“Honour?” Earth paced in a circle, making Luna dizzy. “It doesn’t even have to be in the Solar System. I could take him down to my surface. Neptune would do numbers in Vegas.”

“Earth you are not teaching anyone how to gamble,” Luna said firmly. “Jupiter would kill you.”

Earth immediately stopped his manic pacing and shuddered as he imagined the largest planets reaction. “No. Worse. He’d be disappointed in me.”

“Exactly.”

The planet sat down on the ground with a grumble. “I won’t teach Neptune to gamble.”

“Good.” Luna patted his shoulder.

“…”

“…”

“But hypothetically—“

“No.”

“These figurines look silly.” Neptune picked up one of the black chess pieces and lightly traced the shape with his fingers, bringing it closer to his face to study. 

“That’s a knight. They’re carved to look like a type of Earthling called a horse.” Earth gestured for the ice giant to give him the piece and began setting up the board. “Basically, each figure can only move in a certain way, and the aim of the game is to capture your opponents king.”

“Which one’s the king?”

“This guy. The tall one.” Earth pointed. 

“Ah. What about the slightly shorter one. Is it also a king?”

“No, that’s a queen. It’s the most powerful piece on the board because it can move in so many directions.”

“Huh.” Neptune tilted his head consideringly at the chess set. “Are all the pieces supposed to be different kinds of Earthlings then?”

Earth scratched his head. “Kind of? They’re not different organisms, they’re supposed to represent ranks in a hierarchy.”

“So the queen is at the top of the hierarchy? Why do you want to take the king when the queen can do more things?”

“Well, historically queens weren’t at the top. Except when they were, but that was because of…” Earth trailed off and cleared his throat. This wasn’t really the time for a lengthy discussion about how monarchies worked. Neptune might lose interest soon anyway. “I can tell you about it later. Chess first.”

This wasn’t the first time Earth had explained chess to a planet. He’d brought it up to Jupiter around when it was first invented because it seemed like something the gas giant would like. He ended up being right, but then Jupiter had gone and read an entire library about different strategies and gambits and it became impossible to win against him. I’m not even that good at chess. I just know the basics.

Luna did mention that the Galilean moons knew how to play chess, though. Apparently Callisto was good enough to give Jupiter a challenge.

Earth went through all the pieces, the basics of the game, how everything moved and some general strategies. He thought he did a pretty good job of staying on topic, and veering off into an infodump. “…and that’s how chess works. Any questions?”

Neptune looked between the chess pieces, eyebrows slightly pinched and his grin seeming a little strained.

…yeah, that actually might’ve been too much information at once.

Earth quickly summoned some paper and wrote some notes in his neatest possible handwriting, along with some rough diagrams of how everything was able to move. “Here.” He pushed it forward to float in Neptune’s gravity. “In case you need a recap. And you can always ask while we play.”

Neptune looked at the list, and his smile smoothed out. “Okay, let’s try this out, then!”

There was a moment of silence. “The white pieces always have the first move, so it’s your turn.”

“Ohhh! Right!” Neptune moved his first pawn.

“What does having life feel like?” Neptune asked one day over a slow chess match. 

“Uh,” the rocky planet slowly moved a piece forward, brows furrowing as he mulled over the question. “I guess— it’s kind of like, you know…”

“No. I don’t.” Neptune chirped. “Ice giants can’t have life, silly.

“Yeah, yeah,” Earth waved a hand and rubbed his head with the other. “I’m just thinking. Uh… do you mean how it feels physically or generally?”

“Hm.” Neptune tapped his fingers together. “Physically.”

Earth let out a sigh, leaning back into empty space. “Like… buzzing. Very light buzzing on your surface, except it sometimes is in your surface and you can feel it making your atmosphere buzz as well? But it also feels like a whole body bruise— but in a good way? But then you’re not sure where you end and the buzzing— urgh.” He dragged a hand over his face in frustration. “I’m not explaining this right.”

Neptune hoped not. Nothing of what he described sounded pleasant. 

“Hey. It’s not like it’s painful… all the time.”

Neptune cocked his head, then realised. “Oh, did I say that out loud? Oops.

Earth sighed, tapping his knees a little as he thought. Finally, he stood up and edged closer to Neptune, reaching out with an open palm. “Can I have your hand for a sec?”

Cautiously, Neptune let Earth take his dark blue hand into his lighter blue ones. The rocky planet started tracing feather light swirls onto Nepune’s surface with the tips of his fingers, barely putting any pressure into the motion. “Imagine this, but all over your body.”

The sensation wasn’t bad, more ticklish than anything, but that didn’t stop Neptune from slipping his larger hand out of Earth’s hold and shaking it out. 

Earth shrugged. “Eh, you get used to it.”

“I’m sure you do,” Neptune agreed. “But I’m alright with not having Life.”

“... so that's why compound angle equations are used when both sine and cosine are known. The outcome is surd rather than a decimal so it is more reliable to work with in future calculations.”

“Cool.” Earth shrugged and took a piece from the boneyard. “Most of that went over my head, though. Anyway, to make bee hives the worker bees secrete wax from their abdomens— called beeswax, obviously— that they then chew on to soften it and mold it into hexagonal cubicles.”

“Uh, Neptune?” A new, accented voice called.

The two blue planets both turned to see Uranus approaching Earth’s orbit, one hand raised to shield against the stronger sunlight.

“Uranus!” Neptune greeted happily, waving. 

“Hi,” Earth raised a hand, using th other to stabilise himself as he got used to two bigger gravities in his orbit.

“Uh, hi mates.” Uranus stood stiffly. He looked over to Neptune after a moment of awkward silence. “Is this where you always disappear to when we come down here?”

“Yup! I’m teaching Earth about trigonometry and he’s teaching me about the Earthlings. I’m not retaining much of it, though.”

Earth shrugged, “I mean, I’ve understood basically none of the math, so I think it evens out.”

“Huh.” Uranus pointed at the space between them. “And that?” 

“Dominoes.” Earth held up one of the spotted pieces. “Because we got bored of chess.”

“The Earthlings make a lot of fun puzzles because they get bored all the time. It’s great! Ooh! I can show you some of my favourites when we go back to our orbits! It’s so much fun!”

Uranus smiled softly. “That sounds amazing, Nep. But are you sure you’re okay this far in?” He squinted in the direction of the light. “Seems a bit too hot for us.”

“Nahhh, it’s fine.” Neptune grinned and waved the pale giant off. “I always leave by the time I get tingly anyway.”

After a few more reassurances, Uranus retreated back to Jupiter’s orbit with a promise that he would hang out with Neptune later. The smaller ice giant settled back down into his seat, but paused when he saw Earth looking at him with a crease between his brow.

“‘Tingly?’” Earth echoed. “Is that… bad?”

Neptune made a dismissive noise. “Not really. I mean, it probably means that if I stay in the Goldilocks zone for too long all the ice material in my atmosphere would start to evaporate and I’d essentially start turning into a gas giant—“

“What?”

“It’s fiiiiine because I can just go somewhere cooler before it gets out of hand. I just get a little bit dizzy.”

“But— Neptune, if I knew that being in my orbit makes you sick, I wouldn’t have kept asking you to hang out!”

“But I like coming down to talk to you.” Neptune protested. “I like learning about these fun games, and about your weird organisms.”

“They’re not that weird,” Earth mumbled half heartedly. “But if my orbit hurts you—“

“Well, it’s not like you can come to my orbit, silly. Besides, I can always leave before it gets toooo bad.” His expression softened. “I might be a little crazy, but I am a grown planet. I can take care of myself. Promise.”

“Right, right.” Earth chewed on the inside of his cheek. “If you’re sure…”

“I’m sure!” Neptune waved his hands and happily settled back into their game. “Was it your go or mine?”

“If you can’t come to my orbit, I’m bringing my orbit to you!” Neptune declared on his next visit. He reached a hand into his pocket and pulled out a small army of asteroids.

“Oh, wow. That’s a lot.” Earth went to move closer, hesitated for a moment, then decided that Neptune’s much stronger gravity would probably keep them from hitting him so it should be fine. “Did you bring the entire Kuiper Belt?”

“No, this is only fifty or so asteroids. So that’s like, zero point zero zero zero zero—“

“Yup, got it. I was just being hyperbolic.” Earth looked closer at the small collection. “Is that paint?”

“Yes! These asteroids are from when Uranus started learning to do art. Aren’t they pretty?” Neptune carefully held them out towards Earth, keeping a firm hold on them both with his hands and his gravity. “He’s gotten a lot better now, but they’re still so cool!”

“Wow,” Earth nodded with his eyebrows raised. He pointed at the other rocks in the blue planets hold. “And those ones?”

“Since there wasn’t much else to do in my orbit, I used to note down my observations onto these, and eventually figured out some equations. These are pretty rudimentary, though. I have more scattered around the Kuiper Belt.”

Earth stared blankly at the messy equations. “You figured out a ton of math concepts through observation because you were bored?”

“Mhm!”

“… I am both impressed and terrified.”

“Earth?”

“Hm?”

“Are we friends?”

“I think so, yeah. I like it when you come to visit.”

“Good. I like talking to you. It’s nice to have more friends now.”

...

“Hey, Neptune?”

“What?”

“I’m happy we’re friends.”