Archive of Our Own

Tiso likes cars.

Not skycars— real cars. The ones that stay grounded along the planetside roads, obsolete things that only the older generation still collects because they either have some familial attachment or obsession with them. He likes the way the engines growl, sonorous and ear-shattering. They’re nothing like the ships that sail overhead near the Alliance base or the skycars that soundlessly float up into the air. Old cars have character, a bit of bite.

Tiso likes to read about cars. He learns about them whenever he can, sopping up every piece of information like a new sponge right out of the pack. You put his eyes on a book about old Fords or Hondas— things that are well on their way out of the public consciousness as a vehicle worth driving because why bother when you can get a car that flies instead?— and he soaks it all up. He knows every make, every model. He can even tell you where to jack the body up if your tire blows.

It’s all very impressive for a kid, he was told as he was dropped off in the elementary school’s library today. His teacher plopped him down in the children’s section where they kept books like My Friend Timmy the Turian and Salarian Stories For Silly Kids and instructed him to listen to the librarian until lunchtime. The rest of the students were still in the classroom. Only Tiso was sent here.

Once his teacher left and the librarian was distracted by the complicated computer system, Tiso scurried off into the automotive section for the bigger kids. He’s only seven, but he’s pretty sure he’s old enough to start inching into more complicated books. He wants to find one about classic cars— you know, the types that the old guys drive on Sundays through sleepy neighbourhoods with squared rooftops and smoking exhaust pipes. He’s sure the book is here somewhere.

But the titles are all too complicated for him. He doesn’t recognize a ton of the words, even though he should probably be able to read them. He blinks a few times and tries to make the sounds in his head. Nothing works, though. Minutes pass as he stares longingly at the sideways spines, neck tilted to read the sides.

Tiso is in the middle of squinting when a hand moves into his field of view. He startles at the sudden intrusion, taking a step back and bumping into the shelf behind him. The smell of mothballs and wet shoelaces overtakes him when he turns to see another person standing next to him.

It’s a boy. Tiso doesn’t recognize him, which means he must be from another class. He has big eyes and even bigger glasses, these rounded spectacles that make him look like something out of an anti-bullying commercial. The boy smiles widely with one hand on the book Tiso was just looking at.

“Were you going to read this one?” he asks. His grin is toothy, and Tiso can see a few crooked teeth sticking out from the front.

Tiso nods. “Yeah. I was.”

He glances at the cover, and then back to Tiso. “I was about to take it out— but only for now. Did you want to read it together?”

When Tiso is older, he’ll look back at this moment with fondness. Being a kid was so simple, and life was easy back when unanswered questions could wait until adulthood and sharing was second nature.

He nods, and then the two of them head out into the library’s common area. Circular tables sit close together, chairs nearly bumping into the backs of the others. The librarian is still scratching her head and staring at her monitor’s screen as she tries to renew the same book for the tenth time. Tiso barely notices her when he and the other boy stride past the front desk and to one of the tables.

The boy opens the book. Although Tiso was unable to read the title, he figures out that it’s about classic cars— score. The pictures in the introduction feature hot-red vehicles and navy rides, photos of old engines and gently-modded bodies. Tiso looks at them in rapt fascination and only notices a second later that the boy is staring at him instead of the pages below. Tiso turns to him, confused.

“Aren’t you reading?” the boy asks.

“I am.”

“You’re just looking at the pictures.”

“That’s reading.”

“No, it’s not.”

Tiso frowns. Who is this kid, anyways? No one else is in the library except for them two, so that means he must have also been removed from his classroom while everyone else was busy doing whatever else was doing on. If there’s a common thread, Tiso doesn’t see it.

“Why do you care?” Tiso huffs. Besides being known as a car fanatic, Tiso has also been told he’s got an attitude problem. It pops up on his report cards all the time, at least according to the lady who takes him from home to home, and commands him where to put his singular bag of belongings onto which empty bed.

The boy shrugs. “I dunno. There’s more to learn in the words.”

“So?”

Tiso is off-putting, the lady who looks at him sadly told him once. She’d held his hand at the age of five and said that he argued too much. And although he never quite figured out what abrasive meant when she first said that word to him, he’s quickly seeing what its definition might mean as the boy’s face falls in the quiet.

Most people would probably leave at that point. They’d get up, dust their pants off, and disappear with the book and all its pictures. Tiso would have to seethe alone in the library as he trudged back to the kid’s section— the only section he can truly read.

“How about I read it to you, then?”

Tiso glances up from the cars and looks at the boy. He’s smiling again.

“What?”

“I’ll read. And you can describe the pictures. I think my glasses aren’t so good; they’re kind of blurry to me.”

He’s probably lying, Tiso thinks. He’s been lied to plenty of times in his short life, whether it comes from the lady who coaxes him out of cars and into houses that he hates, or from his teacher who thinks that he’s better off sitting alone in the far corner of the classroom. But for some unexplainable reason, Tiso nods.

“I’m Quirrel, by the way,” the boy says before he begins reading. “What’s your name?”

“Tiso.”

Quirrel grins and extends his arm out. His hand is perfectly straight, thumb sticking out at the top in a delicate angle. When Tiso doesn’t reciprocate the action, Quirrel chuckles and leans over, grabbing Tiso’s wrist. He smashes their hands together until their palms touch, fingers curled around one another’s grasps.

“It’s nice to meet you, Tiso. Are you also here for Mother’s Day?”

“What do you mean?”

Quirrel gestures to the library doors with his head. The library is located right against the school’s atrium, encased in glass; it makes it easy to see the classes that shuffle through the area, heading outside or to the gymnasium. Tiso spots his own class moving in a single file past the library. Joined by them are a collection of middle-aged women, each striding aside a child. His classmates hold paper crafts. Some of them hand them over to the women— their mothers.

“It’s Mother’s Day. Oh, you’re new to this school, aren’t you?” Quirrel says. “The teachers usually dump kids like us in the library on holidays.”

Tiso feels like all he’s done this conversation is ask questions, but he can’t help the next words that tumble out of his mouth. Quirrel says them like they’re normal, just another descriptor to add onto a pair of children who know nothing better, and yet Tiso can’t comprehend what they might imply.

“Kids like us?”

“Yeah,” Quirrel replies with a nod. “You know. Do you celebrate Father’s Day?”

“No.”

“Then, yeah. Kids like us.”

Without further elaboration, Quirrel turns his attention back to the book on the table and begins to read through the introduction. His voice is soft, just barely loud enough to hear over the din of kids walking by the library, and it forces Tiso to lean closer to him. Their shoulders are nestled against one another, heads nearly knocking, as Quirrel speaks.

Being known as the “orphan kid” isn’t the greatest label to have in high school. It’s also not helped by the fact that Tiso is an all-around asshole whenever someone calls him that, but he thinks he’s within his rights to act that way because who the fuck even says that to someone’s face? If he throws a punch, sends out a kick, then the other kid was asking for it.

They had a mom and a dad to teach them it wasn’t right to call other people names.

Tiso didn’t.

His high school is a shithole. Most of the classrooms are fraying at the seams. They have doors with creaky, rusty hinges and rat traps left haphazardly in corners. Tiso can count on two hands the amount of times kids have stepped on them and nearly broke a toe. The paint is chipping, the food always tastes off, and the lockers probably have tetanus on them. There’s not much to like about this school.

And yet Quirrel always has something nice to say about it. Him and Tiso have become the unofficial Orphaned Kids Club in their district, welcoming no new members since their establishment in elementary school. That’s fine by Tiso because he doesn’t really want anyone else to join them— just him and Quirrel works well enough. Where Quirrel is all sunshine smiles, Tiso is the shadow that always appears when the clouds roll overhead. They complement each other like that, as regular as the weather.

Attached at the hip, that’s what the teachers say they are. Most of their classes are together, chosen that way during the beginning of the year to maximize the amount of time they spend with one another. Even though they hang out before and after school, Tiso feels like it never satiates his need to be around Quirrel. It’s just how friends are. And Quirrel is Tiso’s only friend, so it’s only natural that he’d want to be close to him.

There’s a but in that statement, though: but, Tiso isn’t Quirrel’s only friend. Quirrel is— how should Tiso describe this?— popular. Unwittingly so, might he add.

The easy explanation for Quirrel’s inexplicable popularity is because he’s willing to help people with their homework (although, he’s usually busy doing that with Tiso, who’s too stupid to figure out the difference between they’re, their, and there), cheerful, and kind. The harder explanation is that he’s simply magnetic. He pulls people into his orbit, a large, shining star with a gravity that cannot be denied. And Tiso is his closest planet— or maybe a little comet that got stuck circling around him with no other place to go.

Point is, Tiso is a miserable bastard who somehow nabbed himself a friend who everyone likes. People always seem to clamber for his attention, asking him this and that.

Quirrel, do you want to go to the mall later? Quirrel, can you give me a hand with my physics project? Quirrel, are you seeing anyone right now?

Blah, blah, blah. Tiso’s not a jealous person. At least, he doesn’t think he is. And yet that seemingly all kind of goes out the window when he watches the girls hang onto Quirrel’s every word, and he has to wonder why he’s suddenly feeling green over the girls getting his attention, not the other way around.

It’s not something he wants to think about, so he discards it. Completely. He definitely won’t think about it anymore.

That proves to be more difficult than originally planned whenever Tiso finds himself with Quirrel, which is all the time. Right now, they sit on the riverbank that’s situated a few miles from their school. They’re trying to skip rocks. Whoever skips it the longest gets dinner bought for them.

Tiso grabs one of the stones. Its bottom is rounded with a few crags on the top. The mottled texture might make it skid a little slow, but Tiso has faith that this one will go sailing. Quirrel bends and collects his own. He runs a single finger over the top, pale skin reflecting the soft sunlight overhead.

Tiso can’t look away. Quirrel leans back. One of his eyes pinches closed and his head tilts back-and-forth.

“Ready?” he asks.

No. Tiso’s not.

“Yeah, ready.”

The two of them wind their arms back and launch the rocks across the river. It’s not a particularly long river— the other side is really only a few jumps away. That’s why Tiso ends up celebrating a bit too early when he sees Quirrel’s stone sink a pace away from the opposite riverbank. His own stone continues its journey until it strikes the rocky embankment, knocking upward and into a couple who are picnicking along it.

Great, he’s getting a free dinner. But of course it doesn’t happen like how it should.

Tiso’s sure that both his and Quirrel’s stomachs drop at the same time when the boyfriend stands. The guy is covered in wine. Glass shards are caught in his shirt, and they twinkle beneath the bright spring sky. The girlfriend looks particularly upset at her white dress, which is now completely stained.

The boyfriend takes one look at the adjacent bridge that connects the two riverbanks and then balls his fists. Less than a second later, Tiso and Quirrel are bolting into the nearby forest as the boyfriend makes chase. He’s shouting a colourful series of words, ranging all the way from stupid fucking kids to little shitheads. It’s all drowned out by the sound of their footfalls on the grass, tamping down the mushy dirt with each running leap.

Tiso knows that the forest doesn’t go on forever, though. Quick, think quick— they can’t sprint into the street and expect to lose this guy; and going back to the school will just present more problems. Looking around, all Tiso can see are trees everywhere. The foliage reaches high into the sky with trunks older than Mass Relays and the branches are low enough to touch if you jumped.

Both of them come to a halt when they spot the thick branches above. They look at one another and then back up; no words are necessary to figure out what each other is thinking. Their knees bend, launching them upward into the tree. Hands grasp the branch, and Tiso kicks his legs against the trunk to give him the momentum to get onto the platform. Quirrel, being not the most athletic guy out there, struggles to pull himself up.

He flails, arms wavering. The heavy gait of the boyfriend shakes the forest, his approach inching forward with each wasted second Quirrel strains to climb the tree. His face flushes a dark red with effort, cheeks as rouge as a dying star.

“Tiso, you lazy asshole, help me!”

Tiso snaps back to reality. Quirrel looks like he’s about to go supernova. His fingers scrabble at the branch, splinters digging into skin, and that’s when Tiso finally bends over and yanks him up. The two continue the climb upward, made easier that the branches become more condensed the higher they go.

They reach the midpoint of the tree when the boyfriend passes below. He doesn’t bother looking up, the idiot, and he disappears past the trees and out of sight mere seconds later.

The sigh of relief Tiso lets out is one long breath. His lungs blissfully deflate and he hears Quirrel do the same. They slump against the trunk; and while the bark digs into Tiso’s back, he can’t find the energy to give a shit. It’s too nice up here to care about anything else.

The air is crisp, snapping like a twig underfoot. You can’t get breaths this clear unless you head out of the town, far from the choking factories and slogging daily trials that will suffocate you if the smog doesn’t get to you first. Tiso would know— he’s spent most of his life here in this small, nothing place. It’s located just off Highway Whatever-The-Fuck and a few towns over from Here and There, although there’s a chance that could be wrong. Geography has never been Tiso’s strong suit. Not many things are.

If they were kids still (to be fair, they kind of are. When you’re sixteen, you feel like an adult, grown older than the slobbering children in grade school, but adults are always keen on reminding you how young you are), then this would make a great spot for a treehouse. But they’re too mature for that now. Instead, they’ll have to settle for lounging on the branches, legs kicked up and leaned against the trunk. No walls to protect them, no platform to catch them if they fall.

Quirrel’s arm brushes against Tiso’s. He always wears long sleeves, even in the warm weather. Sometimes, he pushes the fabric up his forearms, revealing in slow turns the lily-white flesh underneath. The cottony texture is sandpaper along Tiso’s bare burnt skin, too much time spent outside without proper protection, too much time spent sizzling beneath an uncaring sun. He wouldn’t be surprised if Quirrel’s sleeves left cuts in its wake on Tiso’s arm.

“Glad that’s over with,” Quirrel says as he looks out over the trees. The boyfriend is nowhere to be seen, and enough time has passed that they could comfortably leave without getting chased again. Neither of them do, though.

“What a fucker,” Tiso says. “Chasing after us.”

“Well, you did throw a rock into his picnic.”

“It was an accident. Also, you owe me dinner.”

Quirrel pats his pockets before his eyes go wide. He pats them again— a little more panicked this time.

“Shit.”

“What?”

“I left my wallet at home.”

Tiso rolls his eyes. “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not.”

Just his luck. Out of principle, Tiso refuses to be the I-Owe-You guy, so it looks like he’ll be eating whatever he can scrounge up from the kitchen tonight. His fosters are out for dinner and probably didn’t bother to leave him anything. Toast it is, he supposes.

“Oh, wait,” Quirrel says, sticking a hand in his back pocket. When he pulls it out, a crisp, twenty-dollar bill is revealed. The thing has no crinkles whatsoever, as if it came straight from an ATM. “Nice. Not sure what places still take cash, but…”

“There’s, like, two places to eat at in this town.”

“Yeah, yeah, I know, but I wanted to take you somewhere nice.”

Unbidden, flashes of fancy restaurants flit through Tiso’s mind. It’s a stupid little daydream, ideas of them being dressed to the nines and sitting in a candlelit room. The atmosphere would be moody, dark, and they’d be the only pair of dumb teens in the centre who would definitely not have enough to cover the bill. Their dine and dash would be legendary, waitstaff trailing after them with shaking fists as they ran through the streets and back to their boring hometown.

“Pizza?” Tiso suggests.

“If that’s what you want.”

It’s not, but they don’t really have any other choice. There’s a pretty good Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of town that serves a mean noodle-rice dish, yet even that seems out of their budget.

“I wish we could go somewhere— I don’t know. Different.”

Quirrel nods, humming. “Yeah, like a place that serves truffle and salmon and those little appetizers that aren’t filling at all.”

Tiso is sure he’d hate a restaurant like that. He knows they’re filled with pompous tycoons, people with enough power and money to destroy an entire planet with just a single command. But if Quirrel wants to go, he wouldn’t be opposed to sharing a good drink with his best friend there. As long as it’s better than stolen whiskey, then he’s all for it.

“Maybe one day,” Quirrel says, breaking Tiso from his thoughts. “When we’re far from all this.”

They lock eyes. Neither gaze dares to break the tight tension between them, or maybe Tiso’s just imagining it all and his mind is playing tricks on him. Dappled light filters through the leaves above them, casting disco ball shadows and shimmers on both of them. It makes it hard to focus on Quirrel.

“We?” Tiso asks.

“We,” Quirrel repeats. “Why would it be anything but?”

It’s a pipe dream Quirrel’s talking about. Romantic ideals of running away from a small town, just the two of them as they’re walking arm-in-arm into the sunset over the horizon like something out of an old western vid. Nevertheless, Tiso is helpless in picturing the scene in his head, mentally forced to his knees by the sheer hope of it all. His heart feels like it’s beating two times too fast. He’s going to have a stroke or something.

“I don’t know,” is Tiso’s barely-coherent reply.

“C’mon, let’s go before they close,” Quirrel says as he inches down the tree. His hand slides across the bark, leading him from branch to branch until he hits the ground. From the bottom, he calls, “If we had a car, we could get there faster.”

“If you’re too broke to afford one, just say it. I won’t judge.”

“Fuck off, man. You’re the one with your license and no car still. I’ve only got my learner’s.”

“That you failed twice to get. Looks like someone isn’t so book smart.”

They argue the entire walk and bus ride to the pizza place that Tiso needs a car. There would be so much more they could do, so many more places they could go if they just had a machine that could drive them to it. It’s not like they’ve got parents to ask for a ride.

They only have each other.

Tiso has worked a lot of jobs. A few stints in retail, a couple in fast food, but none have been as infuriating as his car shop apprenticeship. The only reason he got into it was because his counsellor recommended him to the local shop after he fixed her flat— and it was literally just a flat he repaired, nothing amazing or impressive— and he had sworn to himself that he wouldn’t screw this one up.

The customers make it extremely hard not to.

“It’s a scam, honey.”

“The oil change is free, though! And what about the eezo—”

“Who cares about the eezo? I can do it at home for free!”

“I’m not passing up a free service, Mitch.”

“And I’m not letting you get scammed by some kid.”

Tiso reminds himself that he needs the money. This job pays so fucking well. Like a litany, the phrase runs rings in his head until the track wears down and all that’s left is the supple brain matter that connects his neurons to one another.

He needs the money. He needs the money. He needs the money.

“Sir,” Tiso interrupts, “your wife’s skycar is a custom model. It requires a specific key to access the hood cover, which only shops have.”

“Why not just give it to me, then?” the husband spits. “I can do it myself— and I’ll do it for free.”

For the umpteenth time, Tiso explains while trying not to sound beleaguered or harangued or whatever other weird word Quirrel has used to describe this shop job, “We legally can’t, sir.”

“I want to talk to your manager.”

“She’s on a call right now.”

“Well, she should come out here and address her customers. What kind of shop is this, anyways?” the husband rants. Turning to his wife, he says, “We should have just gone to the one downtown, honey. This town has nothing useful in it.”

The husband and wife continue their back-and-forth. Tiso leans against the shop’s front counter as he stares out through the garage door, open to the humid summer air. It’s his last year of high school, the final day of class being so close that he can almost taste the liberty on his tongue. But freedom in this stupid town doesn’t exist unless you can drive to it, and this mind-numbing job is going to make sure he can do that.

The argument drawls on. Tiso counts down the days until his paycheck.

The sunset blurs into a distant haze on the horizon.

In the summer heat, the sky looks as if hues on a painter’s palette, brushstroke clouds pulled sideways into fluttery, fluffy designs that coat the orange and yellow background. It’s easy to be distracted by the way it melts together overhead. The awe of it all. The beauty. The sublime, Tiso recalls. The sole term from his final English class that he can remember, visions of toothy smiles and shoulders brushing and quiet companionship flitting through his head.

Quirrel runs a hand through his hair as the winds whips around them. He barks out a laugh, harsh and sudden, at the careening right turn Tiso takes along the long stretch of highway, pulling them hard into an exit that will take them into the next unknown town over.

Tiso doesn’t have a route planned. This is just a joyride in his new wheels— the one he bought entirely on his own. Quirrel laughs again and Tiso presses back down on the gas, propelling them forward.

“Fuck— slow down, man!” Quirrel exclaims, though his smile doesn’t die down. If anything, it grows.

“I’m only going a hundred.”

“In a seventy!”

“What, you scared?”

“Ha! You wish!”

At that, Tiso slams his foot down on the pedal once more. The engine pumps, churns, spits out a speed that’s far above legal and enough to broach that dangerous boundary of being impounded. He’d just gotten this car, too.

The highway stretches. No one else is on it— just them. Just them two. If Tiso closes his eyes, lets his hands hold steady on the wheel, he can pretend this moment yawns into the expanse to fill the hollowed void that he knows they’ll never get again. They’re eighteen. They’re still young. And the galaxy seems wide enough that he can trick himself into believing that time freezes during summer, rather than muddling everything— every memory— it touches.

They eventually reach the edge of the town’s limits. The roads fizzle out into long, leaning miles of concrete, drifting further into the endless hills that surround their home. The sun has almost fully set. Dusk encroaches on them.

Tiso hops out the side of his car, not bothering to open the door. He’s always wanted to do that, slide above the door and feel cool for once in his life. Quirrel isn’t looking when Tiso leaps, and rather opens his side like a normal person even though the convertible’s top is down and it’s way more fun to pretend like you’re some kind of suave, unflappable guy who takes no shit and jumps over car doors.

Neither say anything when they settle onto one of the grassy hills. By the time they get comfortable, the sun has completely disappeared. The town is nothing but a distant shape draped in a black night, and the stars sparkle with mischief above.

It’s weird to know that the world— the galaxy— is so much bigger than just this town. So much bigger than Tiso or Quirrel. There are countless planets that he hasn’t stepped on, people he’s never met; there are travellers who adventure through space and don’t think twice about ever driving a car on land. They fly, and Tiso’s grounded here.

Then again, he’s always loved cars. He doesn’t have any need to be some hot-shot spacer. He just wants somewhere to drive to.

“It’s almost here,” Quirrel says. “The day of reckoning.”

“You say it like it’s the end of the world.”

“Isn’t it, in a way? We’ve lived our whole lives like this.”

Tiso supposes that’s true. The last day of high school is mere days away, and everyone has plans to get the fuck out of dodge as fast as they can. Tiso isn’t sure what he’ll do— all he knows is that he wants to leave, although the logistics of that are proving to be difficult. There’s the matter of money, jobs, a place to stay. It’s a lot to think about.

“You’re applying to the local college, right?”

“Yup.”

“Not anywhere else?”

Quirrel is quiet for a moment. His lips purse, eyes drifting away from Tiso and up at the night sky. He stares at one of the constellations, vision tracing the way the stars connect to one another despite being so, so far from each other.

“I applied to a few out of state. I don’t think I’ll get in, so… I’ll probably just stay here.”

Tiso knows that’s bullshit. Quirrel is one of, if not the, smartest person in their school. It doesn’t matter that their graduating class has less than fifty people— it’s an achievement to consistently score above the top percentile for your entire academic career. Quirrel can get into whatever Ivy League he wants.

“And then what?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Quirrel chuckles. “I’ll get my degree. You’ll keep working at the shop, right? And we can get a place near the town, but not in it— somewhere we can both live together.”

The stars twinkle. The sky is endless. Tiso closes his eyes and listens to Quirrel talk about how the apartments in the nearby city aren’t too expensive if you get a fourth roommate.

It turns out that Tiso is right. Quirrel can get into any school he wants. This includes those out-of-state.

And Quirrel said he wouldn’t accept any of those ones because he really liked the program in their town’s college. It had a good reputation and a lot of opportunities for growth— whatever that meant in academic lingo-speak. Tiso wasn’t worried about their graduation and subsequent unknown future until Quirrel told him on a sweltering Friday morning that he had just received a scholarship offer.

This scholarship offer was a full-ride. The whole nine yards. It paid for literally everything Quirrel could ever dream of in a school, like housing, food, gas, whatever. He didn’t have to work at all if he accepted it.

The only problem was that it was out-of-state. And not like next-door out-of-state, no— that would be too simple, too easy of an issue to solve. This scholarship was for a school on the other side of the country in one of those hoity-toity big cities that nobody but the ultra-rich could live in.

The conversation they have about it is short and to-the-point. Tiso doesn’t let himself think too long about why his head suddenly hurts and that his palms are soaked with sweat as they speak. He chalks it up to the weather and how bad it gets in the morning right when the sun hits the town in that perfect, metal-melting angle.

“You need to do it,” Tiso tells him. “It’s your chance to leave.”

He feels like an idiot when Quirrel agrees. Because of course he’s going to agree; why wouldn’t he? You’d have to have your brain surgically removed from you to think that not accepting the scholarship is the better answer of the two, yet Tiso let himself hope that Quirrel had suddenly lost all his neurons that day.

There are promises to keep in touch. To not be a stranger. To come back and be friends and always talk and never let each other go and be happy and laugh and hang out to drink bad whiskey and chug beers and smoke old cigarettes and take long drives and go on road trips and sit in comfortable silence and never let one another go. Ever.

Tiso has learned over time that promises are cheap. It’s actions that cost far more than people can usually afford.

Quirrel leaves near the end of the summer. Tiso offers to take him to the airport. They have to drive to get into the city where it’s located, and they take about fifteen wrong turns before finding the correct parking lot and terminal that will whisk Quirrel away to a land unknown.

Standing at the threshold, they hug one another for the first time in their entire friendship’s lifespan. Tiso lets his face sit in the crook of Quirrel’s neck and takes in every bit of him. How he smells, how he feels; the warmth of his lean body and the way his muscles tense whenever he sniffles.

“I don’t want to go,” Quirrel says, soft.

Then don’t, is Tiso’s instinctual answer. Don’t leave me here.

“You gotta, man. Make all that money; get me the fuck out of this place when you’re as rich as the mayor.”

Quirrel laughs wetly. “The mayor isn’t that rich.”

“Oh, yeah? Then why does he drive a ‘55 Coupe? That thing literally costs billions of credits.”

“He does?”

Tiso nods. He remembers the first time he saw the mayor cruising through the town in that beauty of a machine, centuries old and yet still driving like it was built straight out of the factory. There was no way he could afford that thing unless he was embezzling taxpayer funds. Or had a lot of stocks in… something.

“Yeah,” he says, looking at Quirrel. “It’s gorgeous.”

People pass them by. Tiso has never been in a space this crowded before and he’s starting to sweat pretty badly. His shirt is probably soaked through the back, sticking to his scorched skin. Quirrel holds him by the shoulders. Tiso only feels hotter.

Their faces are so close. At this rate, their atoms will fuse until neither can tell who is who. The galaxy will collapse on them for breaking the very laws of the universe, crush them until they’re nothing but stardust and childhood laughter on the cosmic breeze. They move even closer.

Quirrel’s breath fans across Tiso’s lips. He says, “I’ll miss you.”

And for some reason, for some goddamn reason, Tiso doesn’t say it back. He can’t. In the most literal of senses, he cannot. His mouth refuses to form the syllables, and his teeth clench down; it’s like someone’s taken a needle to his flesh and woven them shut.

Eventually, he manages to say, “Yeah.”

God, like a fucking poet. A real Shakespeare, everyone. 

The moment is broken when a deluge of people flood through the terminal, pushing and shoving and scrambling to find where they need to check in. Some kid’s carry-on knocks into Tiso’s shin and it hurts like hell. Except, it doesn’t hurt more than the disappointment in Quirrel’s expression, unsaid words left hanging in the sterile airport atmosphere.

When Quirrel leaves to find his gate, Tiso is left in the big city all alone. He should probably get back soon— wait, no. He doesn’t have to. There’s nothing waiting for him there; all he has is an empty, run-down apartment in one of the cheaper neighbourhoods and a dead-end job that refuses to give him a raise.

Regardless, there’s nothing to do in the city. If Quirrel was here, he’d probably want to go look around and find some trouble to get into, but he’s not.

Tiso heads back to the parking lot. Maybe he’ll take a nap. Eat some cold cuts out of his fridge. Have a midday beer. He makes all of his wonderfully ambitious plans for the day in his head before realizing that he’s standing a few paces from his car, right behind an older man who is staring directly at it.

“Excuse me,” Tiso says, nudging his way past the man. He clicks the key and the car jumps to life.

“This yours?” the man asks as Tiso opens the door. He turns to the man, appraising him quickly in the cold space. He’s in a uniform— Alliance Navy, Tiso recognizes. The epaulettes on his shoulders give it away, as well as the name plate. A lieutenant.

Tiso raises an eyebrow. “Yeah, it is.”

“It’s nice. Really nice. Did you fit this all yourself? The custom mods are— actually, are you one of the college kids?”

What is this guy on about? He doesn’t look like a car guy, but that’s probably because he’s in uniform. Do soldiers look like anything but soldiers when in their getups? Probably not.

“Yeah, it’s my work. And no, I was here to drop a friend off.”

The man nods, extending his hand out. Tiso takes it. It’s firm, sturdy. Unshakably confident. His grip feels like it could keep the universe held together on a single thread.

“I’m Lieutenant Erikson. Listen, there’s a job fair going on at one of the colleges downtown; I’m a recruiter for the Alliance Navy. Come sometime today and we can chat. Your handiwork could do wonders on some of our machines.”

A few days later, Tiso enlists into the Alliance Navy. He’ll be heading to Basic sometime within the next couple of weeks, so it’s time to really start reorganizing his entire life. But before he does any of that, he texts Quirrel to tell him the news.

Only, instead of being happy or excited, Quirrel has a few choice words about the decision. Something about war and danger. The risk of losing a limb.

Tiso scoffs at the comments. He’s finally starting his own life and he’s not about to let Quirrel rain on this sorely-awaited parade. Lieutenant Erikson said that Tiso had promise. He had talent. And the Navy needed that from its recruits, especially the ones fresh out of graduation.

He sells his minimal furniture, the bits and bobs of his life that can’t be taken to boot camp. He figures out the logistics of getting over to the base and collects the paperwork he needs for identification— driver’s license, birth certificate, things that tell people that he’s real and exists, a being that can breathe outside of his friend’s radius.

When all is said and done, there’s only one thing left that needs to go. Well, it doesn’t have to. It can be kept in storage, but there’s no telling when or if he’ll be back.

No. No, he doesn’t need it anymore. It’s served its purpose, and that’s all it will ever do. It hardly matters that it’s the last thing in this nothing place Quirrel touched, and that it’s the only thing Tiso cares about anymore. None of that is important— not more than the life that’s waiting for him beyond this stupid fucking town.

Tiso sells his car because you don’t need cars in space. And that’s all it is.

Maybe it was an inevitability that this would happen. When people are far apart, it’s only natural that they drift in opposite directions. You try to text, you try to keep up, but it’s no match for the gravity that keeps you grounded in your respective spots on the opposite ends of a country, planet, galaxy. Tiso isn’t strong enough to resist the forceful pull.

It’s just nature.

They slowly stop talking as the years pass by. At first, it’s the occasional “What are you up to?” message that one of them sends. And then it gets ignored for some time, and the other shoots an apology for being so busy with whatever they’re doing. The cycle rinses and repeats until both of them have become too tired, too busy, and too swept up in their own lives to remember that they used to have a friend they spoke to every single day as a kid.

As far as Tiso knows, Quirrel is some kind of researcher in a big college or university. And as far as Quirrel knows, Tiso is a random soldier waiting for the next war to break out. Even though that’s not remotely true, Tiso doesn’t have the heart to reach out and break the solidified silence between them. It’s as hard as freshly-cooled steel, impenetrable except for the strongest of bullets.

Plus, it’d be so awkward. Like, hey! What’s up? We haven’t spoken since your last-last-last birthday and I just wanted to tell you that the Alliance rejected my third request to transfer into the mechanics department and now I’m stuck in a platoon with a bunch of people I don’t really care about. Do you miss me? I miss you. Oh, my God. I miss you so much.

It’s easy to fall into the routine of the Navy instead. Wake up at dawn, workout, do drills and target practice. Go out on occasional missions. Shoot this guy and kill that guy and make sure you don’t have nightmares about it by throwing back a whole bottle of whiskey whenever you have leave. Befriend your bunkmate. Don’t stare too hard at the other guys in the shower. Pretend you’re interested in the new girl who recently joined your platoon even though you’re actually watching the smooth curve of your fellow sergeant’s bicep.

The new girl is, unsurprisingly, a tough woman. You kind of have to be if you’re a woman and in the Navy. She ignores the other sergeants’ requests to speak to her and pays most of her attention to the training grounds. She’s great with a gun, amazing at hand-to-hand, and is probably well on her way to a promotion and a ship of her own.

The only person she bothers talking to on base is Tiso, mostly because he’s made no weird overtures toward her and he keeps to himself. She’s good company, if not a bit quiet. The two of them spend a lot of time together in the gym, and have become somewhat friends during their off-time.

Today is one of those days. A few of the guys have wrangled the platoon’s stragglers to get drinks after a particularly rough mission, Tiso included. Everyone on base is fairly nice to him, although they keep him at arm’s length since he’s not very… energetic, let’s put it. He doesn’t smile. Doesn’t like to laugh. He’s just here to get the work done and then go to bed. But that doesn’t mean he’s not invited to the bar outings, especially if it means he’ll buy a round after losing a bet against one of the other soldiers.

“You wanna come with?” Tiso had asked the new girl. Shockingly, she said yes.

Now, they’re here at the bar, all crowded into a corner as they get progressively drunker and drunker. The lieutenant is going to lose his head when the soldiers show up hungover in the morning, but no one really cares about that when there’s a never-ending beer tap and paychecks to spend. The new girl doesn’t say much. She drinks pure vodka. No chaser, no nothing.

Tiso is probably six whiskeys deep when he feels her hand run up his arm. He glances down at her— her cheeks are a dark red, blue eyes reflecting his own expression back at him. She looks acutely uncomfortable as the other men grow in volume and start telling stories about the girls they’ve netted in past platoons.

“You wanna…?” he starts. She nods.

Tiso gets up, and the new girl follows him. No one pays them any mind except for one sergeant: Tiso’s bunkmate. He pops his head out of the crowd and calls Tiso’s name, but he gets no response as the two head out of the bar and into the chilly winter air.

The walk back to the base is quiet. The new girl holds onto Tiso’s arm like a lifeline and he lets her. He knows what it’s like to stumble your way home, unsure of what direction you’re headed in; she looks almost fragile in this state, although he’d never admit that to her out of fear that she’ll put a bullet in between in his eyes. Or break his nose again like the time she did during that one training session of theirs.

Tiso decides to fill the silence with minimal chatter. He talks about cars, primarily. She nods where she’s required and giggles whenever Tiso cracks a bad joke— the kinds that Quirrel would always shake his head at and chuckle under his breath about when he thought Tiso wasn’t listening. The new girl presses her forehead against Tiso’s bare arm. She’s burning.

When they reach the base, the two separate in front of the barracks. The men and women’s rooms are obviously split, so this is where they’re meant to say goodnight. Tiso’s made sure that none of the guys got their grubby hands on the new girl, and the new girl can go and get some rest before wheel’s up tomorrow. All is well.

But that’s not how these stories go, right? Something wells in Tiso’s stomach, pushing him closer to the new girl. He thinks of the guys back at the bar, their sordid stories and the normalcy in their voices. Part of him wonders if Quirrel has a girlfriend— he never mentioned meeting anyone or doing any dating while they still spoke to each other. Maybe he has one now. He probably does. Quirrel’s always been popular with the girls.

The new girl doesn’t move as Tiso takes a step forward. When he leans down, she leans up, and their lips connect in the middle. It all feels wrong, and yet he puts his hands on her hips anyways and guides her against the wall. Her arms go around his shoulders. They feel too light, too dainty, even though he knows they’re made of nothing but corded, hardened muscle.

He feels like a creep as the kiss deepens. The new girl is his friend. She hung around him because she knew he wouldn’t try to hit on her, and now look at him.

It’s not fair. Quirrel gets to kiss girls, gets to have his way with women, and not feel like crawling out of his skin. Why does he get to be normal? Why does he get to have fun? Why does he get to enjoy all the fruits of life while Tiso is stuck on a military base, experiencing his first kiss with someone he shouldn’t be having it with?

Tiso doesn’t mean to push the new girl away as hard as he does, but it happens regardless. She bumps her head against the wall and Tiso is already apologizing. He never apologizes unless he means it, and he really fucking does this time. The new girl has tears pricking the edge of her eyes, mascara she put on just for this night beginning to trickle down her cheeks. Her lip wobbles as Tiso tries to explain that it’s not her, it’s him. It’s always been him and he’s always been the problem. She doesn’t deserve to be treated like this. The whiskey is making him say all of it, every last witless word. It turns his tongue loose and sics it on anything that moves.

She doesn’t care about his excuses. She simply nods and then turns to her barracks. The door shuts soundlessly behind her.

“Damn,” a voice says behind him. “You fucked that one up bad.”

Tiso turns on his heel. It’s his bunkmate, the sergeant. He’s standing with his hands on his hips, a funny smile on his face as he stares at Tiso with a mixture of humour and pity.

“Fuck off,” Tiso spits. He moves to head into the barracks, but is stopped by the sergeant’s hand on his shoulder.

“Hey, just ‘cause you lost one battle doesn’t mean you’ll lose ‘em all. You know what the lieutenant says.”

“The lieutenant doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

“Do you know what you’re talking about?”

No, he doesn’t, thank you very much. Tiso shakes the sergeant off of him and slides through the barrack doors. As expected, there’s no one else here tonight— they’re all off having fun and getting piss drunk. The sergeant follows him in.

“Look, man,” says the sergeant. Tiso is already kicking off his boots and shucking his shirt. He just wants to go to bed— he doesn’t need the lecture. “We’ve all got itches that sometimes can’t be scratched. No need to be so down about it.”

“I wasn’t—” Tiso doesn’t even know what he’s saying anymore. “I wasn’t trying to get with her. I don’t know what I was thinking.”

The sergeant gives him a look.

“Really?”

“Really.”

When the sergeant says nothing in reply, Tiso goes back to getting ready for bed. His mouth tastes like dirt but he’s too lazy (or apathetic) to brush his teeth tonight. All he does is put on his sleep pants and kicks the sergeant over, who is currently sitting in his bottom bunk.

“Dude, move. I’m going to bed,” Tiso says.

But the sergeant doesn’t move. Instead, he leans onto one arm and dips to where Tiso’s head is resting against the pillow. He’s close enough that Tiso can count the scars on his cheeks, old, faded injuries that have left their lasting mark on his tanned skin. He looks warm, still pleasantly half-drunk.

“I don’t like going to bed when I’ve got an itch. Do you?” he asks, voice low. It buzzes lower than a bassline.

Tiso doesn’t get much sleep that night. They wrap up when the other guys start filing back into the base— but even if they continued going at it, they’d probably be too sloshed to notice what was going on in Tiso and the sergeant’s bunk.

When the morning comes, Tiso has marks on his neck like he’s a teenager. His chest is decorated in pink bites and his hips feel sore. He stretches out his muscles in the gym, pointedly ignoring when the new girl slips into the room before scurrying out the next second.

At the loading bay, the sergeant asks who Quirrel is.

“What?”

“You heard me.”

“I don’t think I did, sarge.”

“Whatever. Whoever he is, you better get that figured out. People normally don’t like being called the wrong name in bed.”

Tiso thinks he’s gay.

He probably realized that a little too late.

The transfer came as a surprise.

Now at a relatively steady part of his military career, Tiso was slightly shocked to hear from his CO that he’d be getting shifted to a new ship. Apparently, it was a very last-minute thing ordered by Captain Iselda, who was working on getting the SSV Warsaw fitted with a new crew and newly-minted commander. Tiso shouldn’t care, but he does. He’s gotten comfortable in his current ship and the guys there.

Whatever. He saluted, grabbed his shit, and left the ship. He’d be staying in the Citadel for a couple of days before the Warsaw docked to pick him up. He spent most of it staring at the wall, lounging in the bar, or practicing in the range. A fairly normal set of days in anticipation for what would be a very different set of upcoming months.

It’s finally the day of his transfer. Tiso does what he normally does on his work days— gets into uniform, grabs his papers, and then heads out to do his duty. The Alliance should be so proud of this not-so-wayward son.

The docking bay isn’t too far from his apartment complex on the Citadel. That’s the real nice thing about being in the Navy— you get all of these perks just for holding a gun and staying alive long enough to receive a pat on the back from your CO. Too bad most people aren’t off-duty all that often to enjoy any of it.

Tiso passes through the throngs of people until he reaches the docks. Lines of ships are sat next one another, maintenance crews busy with their daily tasks to keep them in working shape. It’s not quite like taking care of a car, but it’s pretty close. The only big difference is the scale and manpower, and ships have always been a bit too large for Tiso’s gearhead tastes. Still, he likes knowing how they work, even if he’s total dogshit at flying them. And that’s just in simulations, too.

A few of the maintenance guys wave at Tiso when he passes by, and he returns the greeting. He reads the ships’ names as he walks down through the centre aisle, counting the numbers and eyes trailing over finely-painted lettering before he reaches the very end of the docks. There it is, stationed at the edge: the SSV Warsaw in all her beauty.

Tiso prepares himself to meet his new commander. He doesn’t overthink these things— they just are when you’re in the Alliance. You get passed around more often than a cigarette between nicotine-hungry teens, each CO taking a hit of your sharpshooter skills or your ability to disarm a combatant when you land in their crew. And so he strides into the ship, ready to salute whoever’s ass he’ll be kissing for the foreseeable future.

Although before anything happens, there’s a clamour of activity behind Tiso. Someone shouts, panic rising in their voice. Something crosses his vision, a flitting blur of black N7 armour that rushes out the entrance and back into the docking bay’s aisle.

There are sparks spitting from the side of the Warsaw, put out only with the help of the person in the N7 armour and the fire extinguisher in their hands. The maintenance crew gives them their thanks, laughing off the incident as if the ship bursting randomly into flame is just a normal part of the job. Which, Tiso would like to say, is definitely not.

“Trying out the armour again, Commander?” one of the maintenance guys asks.

“You’re still docked!” another chimes in.

“With the helmet, too,” the other teases.

The N7 person— the Warsaw’s commander— laughs, though the sound is muffled through the helmet. They move to slide it off.

In one simple move, Tiso’s shattered world inexplicably repairs itself.

“Give me a break, I’m just excited to get started,” the commander chuckles. His brown eyes look lighter than ever in the harsh Citadel lights, and his skin is still just as pale as it was back on Earth. His hair is short now, but not too short. The glasses are gone. And his laugh sounds the same. Light, airy; unbothered by the fact that he works as a legal murderer, equipped with assault weapons and explosive tools.

Quirrel turns. His expression would be comical if Tiso didn’t feel like his heart was about to crawl out of his mouth and beg for forgiveness on the floor at this very moment. Tiso probably looks about the same as his old, lost friend does.

“Tiso?” Quirrel whispers.

“Sergeant Tiso,” Tiso corrects.

Tiso’s mind has replayed this imaginary moment hundreds of thousands of times in his head. He had so many things he wanted to say, arguments he wanted to start. He’d had a whole script planned. There were alternate versions for if he wanted to make Quirrel bleed or laugh, cry or smile. He wanted to punch him. To slap him. God, to fucking hug him like the sun was about to explode and it was the end of the universe as they knew it.

But none of that happens. Instead, Quirrel simply smiles, and it’s just as toothy as it was when they were kids. His hand shoots out.

“Welcome aboard, Sergeant Tiso. I’m Commander Quirrel. It’s a pleasure.”

Tiso takes Quirrel’s grasp in his. The gauntlet is cold against his own sweating palm, slick with nervousness.

He knows how to shake someone’s hand now.

This time, he doesn’t plan on letting go.

“Likewise.”