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Uranus had no bloody idea what to do.
Not with their whole general current situation, and not with the empty canvas in front of him.
It probably seemed weird of him to do—especially to all of the rogues around—but painting had always relaxed him, and he felt like he’d explode into icy carnage if he didn’t distract himself, so… painting it was. He knew the other planets were still gathered together talking amongst themselves about the issue of being scattered into the darkness, but what did he have to offer for the conversation? Nothing! So he’d drifted away, materialized an empty canvas, a single brush, and the simple palette now laid out in front of him, and he’d sat there.
And was still sat there, brush dripping blue onto the ends of his jacket.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself—eyes darting up and around at the vistas all around, galaxies and distant stars and the empty black between—“There’s plenty of inspiration out here, mate, just take it.” He’d have to get used to painting like this, anyway. At least he was able to rely on the dim glow of his rings—even if that was fading too, without the light from the Sun there to reflect—and the combined light of the rogues all around them to see now. Stars knew how he’d fare once he was—
You will spread across the Milky Way galaxy and help us save millions of lost planets. Only after you’ve saved a million may you return.
Each. Which is why you must all go in separate directions.
Uranus groaned under his breath as SIMP’s words returned to circle in his mind. Galaxies, why wasn’t this working? Painting always relaxed him, didn’t it?!
It was just…
Separate directions?! Separate directions?
His hand tightened on his brush handle until his fingers ached from the force of it, and finally he relaxed them, exhaling through gritted teeth. The Rogues’ so-called Kingdom felt strange all around him, the cold out here burrowed into his skin without end, and it didn’t even feel right—far different from what he was used to in every way. Instead of only what he was used to, there was the faint tug of gravity from every direction, a bare few of them recognizable.
Even the recognizable ones were buried under stars knew how many unrecognizable.
Uranus tugged at the end of his braid with his free hand—ignoring how messy it felt under his touch—and tried to breathe in and out until his annoyance receded.
So. They were supposed to save a million planets.
Each.
And to get that done—because apparently they couldn’t help each other one bit, like that wouldn’t make this a billion times easier—SIMP was making sure they’d be sent off in separate directions. Alone. Unable to see each other for stars knew how long.
Uranus had no idea how he was supposed to do this.
He hadn’t even spoken to a million planets. Not even twenty!
His entire speaking experience had been limited to the Solar System, and now…
Who did SIMP think they were, the bloody hero brigade? And why was Jupiter so determined to rid himself of his guilt that he was dragging them along with him? Uranus— Okay, that last question had an answer that he understood. He’d felt guilty before, and he knew what it did, but…
Still.
It killed him to think of when he’d asked Neptune if he’d be alright, and Neptune’s voice hadn’t even—hadn’t even wobbled! I know, but I’ll be okay. Uranus still wanted to grab him by the front of his fluffy blue jacket and shake him and shout at him that no, he bloody well would not be okay, because Uranus knew what Neptune’s orbit did to him when he was alone for too long. And his orbit was nothing like this. He’d watched with Saturn at his side while Neptune talked to a bloody asteroid like it’d talk right back, and he’d watched Neptune forget names and people and—
Uranus didn’t want to lose him more than he already had, okay?
He’d only recently come to the obvious realization that Neptune and he were practically all each other had, if the rest of the Solar System continued on in the trend of ignoring their existences. It… Stars, he couldn’t lose him now.
But he couldn’t tell SIMP no, either, at least not easily. It was just as likely he’d be cast out and called a traitor, and then he’d either have to drag his sorry self back to the Solar System and plead the Sun for forgiveness or just deal with being completely isolated and alone for the ready of his horrid existence.
Wow. Great options, there.
He worked his jaw and let go of the brush, watching it float towards the canvas with the minimal momentum he’d given it, the end of it so dry thanks to how long he’d been enshrined in his thoughts that it didn’t even leave a hint of blue when it brushed against the surface of the canvas.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered to himself, glaring at it. “Get it together, mate.”
The empty canvas stayed empty.
And it was still empty when he felt a brush of familiar if unexpected gravity against the edge of his own, so light it took him a second to place the feeling.
?!
Uranus whirled around and immediately set his eyes on Venus, blinking several times like it’d clear him from his vision—like he couldn’t feel his gravity, too—until Venus stopped, eyes narrowing when they met his.
“What?”
“Uhm.” Uranus swallowed, eyes darting about in search of the rest of the rocky planets, mostly because that was the only explanation. “You lost, mate?”
Venus huffed, arms crossing over his chest as his head tilted back slightly. “No, I’m not lost. Do I look lost?” He didn’t seem interested in starting up an actual conversation, but that only made Uranus feel that much more surprised and confused as to why he’d even made his way over to the patch of Kingdom space he’d set up his supplies in.
He twisted the dry-bristled brush in his fingers.
Sort of.
Uranus didn’t say that aloud, instead taking a chance to study Venus—he’d seen the rocky up close far more recently than he had probably ever before, and already he’d grown so used to the molten, glowering orange of his eyes that being met with a deep shade orange-y gray had his skin prickling in unease.
“You look like you’re about three seconds from punching an asteroid,” he said, and then immediately wanted to pinch himself for saying it. But to his surprise, Venus looked… alright, not in any way amused, but different. His stiff posture relaxed just a bit before straightening right back up, fists squeezing and relaxing. “And—uh, shouldn’t you be with the other planets? I thought we were sticking together.” His eyes flicked to the empty canvas behind him, and Uranus resisted the urge to step in front of it and hide his utter failure at distraction.
“Maybe I am.” He jerked his chin backwards, making Uranus’s eyes dart in the same direction only to find the nearby cluster of the other planets. Jupiter and Saturn were clustered together, and even from the distance between them Uranus could tell they were in heated discussion about something.
Probably exactly what he was trying to distract himself from.
To his surprise, a short distance away from them Neptune was widely gesturing in conversation with a surprisingly-interested looking Planet X, the sight of which made him helplessly smile just a tad. He really did hope the two got along now that there wasn’t… well, uh, everything going on.
(Everything then. Now there was a new everything going on, but it felt like there always was.)
“Jupiter’s back there doing his stupid guilty-martyr thing, and I couldn’t stand listening to him for another second. No idea how Saturn does it,” Venus added, still scowling. “I’d rather tear my own crust off piece by piece.”
Uranus grimaced at that mental image.
“Not to mention,” he said, rolling his eyes, “if I should be there, shouldn’t you?”
He blinked.
“What?”
“You listening or not? You just said you thought we were sticking together. If I should be there, you should too. Unless you’re so infatuated with Planet X that you’ve forgotten you’re one of us.” He shifted a step backwards with the words, still unable to hide his surprise—a surprise he couldn’t really name a reason for—even as Venus kept staring.
And then the words registered in actuality, and he flushed, jabbing the paintbrush at Venus.
“Hey! I am not—not infatuated with Planet X, you wanker!”
Venus just snickered.
“I got tired of Neptune trying to convince me to stop worrying about him being isolated for the next several millennia,” he grumbled, shoulders slumping. His gaze snagged on the tiny twitch in Venus’s mouth, like he was holding back more snickers. “But seriously, mate? Why here? You just… turned and walked in the other direction and—?”
Venus closed up again.
“And ended up next to an ice giant staring at an empty canvas,” he snapped. “My luck.”
Uranus felt slightly dismayed—what in all of the stars had he said wrong?—but tried not to let it show. He focused on Venus’s words instead. “Oi! I’m having a… a moment! My inspiration stayed back in the Solar System, apparently right beside your ability to be nice!” He huffed. “If it ever existed.” The sneer growing on Venus’s face in response to his sarcastic response oddly reminded him of Neptune. Not that Neptune would ever sneer, but in how it made him think of his tendency to grin no matter what was happening, to be cheerful despite the odds. Just in the exact opposite manner.
Hmm…
Uranus shook the thought out of his head when Venus started speaking.
“You’re not having a moment,” he snapped, “you’ve been having a staring contest with a white rectangle for hours. Getting nothing done.” Opening his mouth in response, Uranus found no words rising to the surface; instead he just laughed abruptly, shoulders shaking with it, brush pressed to his mouth when he clasped one hand over it to muffle himself.
Venus blinked, sneer faltering. “What’s so funny?”
“N-Nothing,” Uranus said, waving one hand in his direction. “Sorry, mate, no idea—no idea what happened there. But…” He sighed heavily, chest rising and fall with the force. “Bloody hell, you’re right. That ‘rectangle’ is winning.” Before he could think about how dumb it looked, Uranus lifted both hands and made literal air quotes with the final sentence.
He didn’t think about that as much when Venus’s mouth twitched in the corner again.
Half-expecting Venus to turn and leave any moment, Uranus waited for him to speak again—or for him to come up with something to say—but instead Venus just stared, ghostly gray eyes burning into his in the same manner his usual molten orange ones did.
(Did his look that creepy? Oh, great.)
The look on his face was more grumpy than truly angry, not that Uranus knew how he made that distinction. Rather than acknowledge that Venus was there—at least directly, since there was no bloody way he was going to ignore him completely, not with how he’d stepped even closer, enough that his gravity was tugging consistently against the boundaries of his own—Uranus turned back to his empty canvas and dipped his dry brush back into the paint.
He still couldn’t paint anything, to his annoyance.
The first spark of true inspiration didn’t find him until he angled his head perfectly to glance at Venus out of the corner of his eye, taking in the sharp line of his jaw, the contrasting patches of visible skin, the vibrance of his hair where it tumbled over his crossed arms.
He was—would be, a brilliant subject, wouldn’t he? Just brilliant.
All that color, and…
Uranus could see it in the back of his head, the perfect portrait building itself block by block in his mind’s eye. His hair, his eyes—the proper molten orange, not gray—his stiff posture and scowl; and before he knew it, he lifted the brush and put paint to canvas, losing himself in the colors before he could even tell himself to remember that Venus was right there.
(He hoped he’d walked away before it was too obvious what he was painting.)
Even after they’d all departed from the Rogue Planet Kingdom, Venus was still with him. His gravity tugged against his own, his lingering ambient heat the only sense of it left, and Uranus swore he could occasionally feel him glaring.
Why in all of the stars had he followed him? Uranus had no bloody idea.
He’d asked him one time—the first point he’d sensed Venus’s gravity and whirled around only to find the rocky staring at him with a glare that seemed almost funny considering he was the one who’d followed him—and Venus had just kept glaring at him until Uranus had given up and cautiously turned around, ever-aware of the faint gravity on the edges of his.
Venus had only gotten closer since.
He’d asked again when Venus had closed half the distance between them.
“Mate, didn’t SIMP assign you your own… mission?”
Uranus would be lying to say he wanted Venus to leave—the company was nice, even if it confused him and they never spoke to each other—but why was he here? Wouldn’t it have made more sense to follow another one of the rockies, Mars or Mercury?
That time he’d grunted and at least answered. “It looked boring.”
Uranus blinked. “Mate, it’s space. It’s going to look bloody boring.”
Venus’s eyes drifted away, his entire body shifting in another direction; that time Uranus outright rolled his eyes and turned away, focusing instead on his sketchbook and the growing battery of galaxy and nebula sketches he was collecting. “Are you at least going to do anything more than float there? I think that’s the boring part. You could look for planets.”
“Because you aren’t?” He snorted in amusement.
“Hey!” Uranus shot him an offended look. “I’m looking for them!” He wasn’t… really trying, but for all Venus knew he was! Rude assumption to make. “Maybe you’re just scaring them off, with your… your everything, mate!” He gestured, jabbing the pencil point towards Venus. “You glower and glare and—and probably make any potential rogue planets think we’re here to—to fight them, or…” He spluttered and trailed off, taken aback by the slight smirk taking over Venus’s face. “Or something.”
“Or something,” Venus echoed, undeniably mocking.
(…At least it wasn’t mocking his name?)
“Shut up!” he declared, flustered, cheeks already oddly warm in the never-ending cold. “You’re literally in my—uh, my…” What was the word SIMP had used? Stars, he couldn’t remember. It was… “trajectory! You’re in my trajectory. That I was assigned.”
“Yes, I am,” Venus said, bored. “Don’t read into it.”
Uranus’s eye twitched, his flush not dying down in the slightest. He whirled around, bent over his sketchbook, and ignored the twinge in his back as he furiously scribbled over the last nebula sketch he’d made, letting his embarrassment leech out with every pencil stroke. When he flipped the page and started a new sketch it was entirely muscle memory, such that by the time he realized what he was drawing Venus’s face was already half-formed, the next stroke following the line of his jaw.
“Bloody hell,” he muttered, staring at the ghostly sketch marks.
At least he looked—
Uranus scribbled that out too.
Stars, he couldn’t stop.
Venus practically lived in every crook and cranny of his brain, was the only thing his hands moved to paint or sketch or his mind wanted to think of. It wasn’t anything he’d ever known to expect, nothing he’d ever wanted to. The closest he’d ever come to something like this was constantly painting Saturn, and he had to admit that was more out of pure envy and wish than anything else.
Not to mention it was Venus!
Venus.
Need he remind his brain one more time, Venus. Rocky planet Venus. Venus who—
Hadn’t left, for some reason. Despite how much they bickered and complained about each other; chief complaints being that Uranus muttered to himself too much and stared too much and existed too much (he’d stared at Venus in blatant disbelief for a few seconds after that one), while Venus was too prickly to stand, that even with the cold piercing right through them he was too hot for his paints (which were made for him and his cold, after all) which meant Uranus was constantly complaining about his proximity (and which had nothing to do with the fact that he could only paint Venus nowadays, absolutely nothing at all). The few times he’d managed to paint something else and sat in view of Venus, his unsolicited opinions on color and shape had nearly sent Uranus through the nonexistent roof, so… safe to say it’d been a fun bit of time.
And he wasn’t even lying or being sarcastic when he said that.
He’d had more simple fun the past while than he’d had in millions, billions of years.
Uranus had no idea what that meant at all, nor what they were going to do when they came across their first actual potential rogue planet (since they had to save a million each per day, after all), but for now he was happy taking it as it went. They’d only had one true argument, after all, when Venus had used his name as an obvious joke (and despite trying to become used to that—a better… sport, about it—Uranus knew when something was a joke joke versus a malicious joke) and he’d gotten so worked up about it he’d outright tried to leave Venus behind.
It’d failed, of course, but…
Venus hadn’t done anything like it since, and for a while after he’d been close enough to feel again, Uranus had felt the undeniable sensation of eyes on him and said nothing about it. Now they were back into the usual routine, and… it was nice.
He wasn’t sure how he might have fared alone, but now he didn’t have to.
Sometimes—okay, a lot of times—Uranus found himself thinking about Neptune, staring off into the blanket of brilliant stars all around them with the core-aching hope that Neptune would be alright on his own trip, either that or this stupid mission would get recalled and they’d all get to be together again, the Solar System’s planets (save… one) together like they belonged.
Er. They technically weren’t the Solar System’s planets, he guessed. Not anymore. They were rogue planets now, so they belonged more to that collective than anything else, but… it’d be stupid to discard their connections because of that.
Not just stupid, outright moronic.
Moronic and idiotic and… uh, all those synonyms for that word.
Uranus couldn’t really materialize a thesaurus right here and now, okay?
Besides, he was currently in the midst of, guess what, sketching Venus. He was really trying to be secretive about it—barely glancing up through his lashes and letting his own mind fill out the blurry picture—but still he felt prickly and on-edge. After all… Venus wasn’t even asleep. He was faking it, which Uranus could only tell because he’d now spent way too much time near sleeping Venus. In his sleep he was way more relaxed, his features empty of the usual disdain that was either a welded mask or his usual emotion.
His fingers were cramping with the cold; he wasn’t used to it, considering he was an ice giant, but Uranus was used to pain, so he just pushed on through it, idly sketching how Venus’s balled, tensed-up fist rested in his lap.
What was he even thinking about?
He idly shaded enough to make the paler patches of skin on his knuckles clearer, tongue poking against one canine when he squinted, leaning in closer. When his eyes skated over the entirety of the sketch, Uranus couldn’t help but feel proud for once, remembering exactly how his first sketches of Venus had looked in comparison to this one.
Though…
Uranus’s eyes flicked up to Venus, and he frowned.
He still couldn’t get his stars-damned expression right.
Ugh.
It’d be easier if he could sketch without worrying about Venus catching him, but that meant asking him, and frankly Uranus would… well, there were plenty of things he’d rather do.
“You’re doing it again,” Venus said, sounding bored. “Could you control your gravity?”
Uranus nearly yelped, pen dragging a jagged line an inch from Venus’s face on his paper. “Mate! Bloody hell, seriously? I was dr—I was doing something?”
Venus snorted.
“You were staring at me,” he said, making Uranus’s cheeks shoot through with warmth. “And you kept reaching out with your gravity. I can feel that.” He tipped his head a little, black eyes lidding. “It’s annoying, if you didn’t know that.”
“Shut up,” he hissed, “and it’s not like I mean to!”
Still, he physically reined his own gravity in so tight it almost felt like he could have crushed himself at that point, and Venus just kept staring, clearly not intending to go back to faking sleep at any point. Glancing down at his sketch—with a little flare of relief that it wasn’t ruined—Uranus went to close the book, at the same time looking back up just in time to catch Venus stalking towards him.
He yelped again. And also nearly threw his sketchbook until he remembered what was in there.
“Bloody hell!”
“What are you drawing?” Venus demanded.
Uranus broke out in goosebumps. “Uh.”
He looked down at the same time as Venus, eyes widening in horror when he realized it was wide open, sketch fully visible to Venus’s prying eyes. “That’s nothing!” He slapped one hand down and only managed to cover everything but Venus’s face in the sketch.
“It’s a… nebula?” he tried, practically sweating despite the cold. “One we passed?”
They both looked down at the obvious face on the canvas, and Venus crossed his arms over his chest and took a step back. “A nebula,” he repeated, practically growling the word; Uranus just worried at his bottom lip and did his best to think past the hot embarrassment growing bigger and bigger in his core. “Yeah, sure. If that’s what you want to believe, Uranus.”
Even as—for once, truly—annoyed as he sounded, Uranus’s name came out perfectly.
His shoulders sagged. “No, mate, it’s not.” Venus’s eyes jumped to his, narrowing. “It’s—uh, you. I’ve been painting you.” It wasn’t like it wasn’t obvious just based on the first canvas, but his eyes noticeably widened—still entirely, oddly black—when Uranus reached behind him and held out the sketchbook, swallowing hard. “You can look. It’s… you, after all.”
Venus stared at the offered sketchbook for a moment, stiff-faced and unmoving.
“What’s that for? I don’t need to see your art.”
Still, the moment Uranus went to retract his arm, Venus reached out and grabbed the sketchbook from him, leaving his nerves prickling as he watched him study the page. His grip on it was surprisingly loose in comparison to the intense expression he wore, intense and not-at-all judging.
“It’s not finished,” he hurried to say, voice climbing in volume and in tone. “The shading’s off, I know. And your expression’s not right. I was trying to get the light right, but, uh—” He coughed. “There’s not really a star out here, mate. Hard to tell. It’s all really guesswork more than anything—”
“Shut up.”
He shut up.
Uranus lifted one hand and dragged his thumb along the plaits of his braid—already messy and worn from so long without renewal, likely now even closer to falling out—to soothe his own core-deep anxiety. What in all the stars was Venus thinking? Was this what would finally get him to leave Uranus alone, like they were both supposed to be?
(He hoped not. He really, really hoped not.)
Bloody hell, this was a mess.
But then Venus went to turn the page, and Uranus's alarm spiked to catastrophic levels—he reached out before he could stop himself, grabbing Venus's wrist.
Both of them froze.
Uranus stared down at his own fingers wrapped around Venus’s wrist, far too aware of the ambient heat beneath them; and when he finally lifted his gaze, Venus’s pure-black eyes met his, unreadable and intense as ever. “S-Sorry,” he said, not letting go, “but don’t turn the page, mate. Just that one.”
Venus quirked an eyebrow, pushing against his grip like he was going to try to turn it anyway. Uranus inhaled sharply—stars, how many sketches of Venus did he have in the book already? An embarrassing amount, definitely—before he stopped, huffing and freeing his wrist from his grip, leaving the sketchbook floating before them as Uranus reached out and snatched it.
“Don’t worry,” he said, wearing a not-really-cheerful grin, “I already know about all those sketches. You make it obvious you’re looking, Uranus.”
…Exploding into icy carnage didn’t sound so bad anymore.
“What?!” he squawked. “I don’t—uh, I don’t know what you’re talking about!”
“That sketchbook is full of me,” Venus said, jutting his chin towards it. “I’m not an idiot. You staring at me half the damn time is a pretty big hint, Uranus.” Completely ensconced within his mortification, he tipped his head down and froze, eyes on Venus’s hands… or more precisely, on how Venus was grasping at exactly where he’d grabbed his wrist, thumb dragging against it. Even his abrupt laughter didn’t distract him, the sound rough and gleeful as his grin. “Did you think you were hiding it?”
“Sort of,” he admitted, clutching the sketchbook to his chest. He didn’t look at Venus, instead focusing on the vista of distant stars, galaxies, and nebulae all around them—all the while, his mind still on how he’d touched the same spot Uranus had, like he was trying to remember the feeling. “I—I—uh.” His words and thoughts left him, both at once, leaving him to flounder completely. “Venus?”
“What?”
He’d lost the glee in his voice, like even Venus knew something about the mood had changed.
Uranus dematerialized his sketchbook. “I’ve been drawing you since you approached me in the Rogue Kingdom,” he admitted. Every bit of confidence he’d scraped together to say it fell apart the moment he watched Venus’s expression spasm, his lips parting slightly. Uranus couldn’t help staring at them for a second before shaking the thoughts away and finishing with an uncertain, “That’s… that’s why.”
Venus stayed completely still otherwise, like he was still digesting the words.
He just tried not to have a core attack and keel over dead on the spot. Or give into the urge to run away and never return again, to act like the stupid assigned mission actually mattered to him. Or scream in Venus’s face. Or—
“I didn’t follow you because it looked less boring.” It sounded like Venus thought it was physical torture to admit. “I followed you because I saw your first painting of me. And—” He cut himself off with a hiss, and suddenly he was moving, and the next thing Uranus knew was hands grabbing at the lapel of his jacket and hauling him in, and suddenly the only thing filling his vision was Venus’s face, and suddenly… suddenly he knew exactly what he wanted.
His breath caught in his throat, and he leaned an inch forward, and—
Venus’s mouth was warm against his, his lips warm and chapped, and the moment he registered actually what that meant he melted into the heat completely, allowing his own gravity to do the bare minimum of keeping him standing.
Kissing, he distantly thought in complete disbelief, I’m kissing Venus.
And then his mind went blissfully empty, sensation taking over.
With an empty mind he finally managed to react, pressing back into the kiss and feeling goosebumps crawl up his arms when Venus slid one hand around to the nape of his neck, grasping tightly and sending yet more warmth overwhelming him. He tipped his head for a better angle and gave a sound that made Venus undeniably smirk into the kiss, but the moment he did Uranus gave as good as he got and let his lips part, nipping purposefully roughly at Venus’s bottom lip.
They broke apart a moment later, and the unsteady quality in Venus’s breathing made his own shaky thoughts feel a little lighter.
“Did—Did you just—Did we just—?”
Venus snickered once before reeling him right back in, and Uranus went completely willingly, giving in like it was instinct and allowing his mouth to open against Venus’s, breath hitching and chest aching and core twisting so tight, and—
Bloody hell, he never wanted to stop.
(He wanted to sketch the moment Venus had pulled back, the look in his eyes. But that meant stopping. So it could wait, couldn’t it?)
The one time he pulled back just enough to breathe, Venus followed him, and so he gave up and kept kissing him back until he quite literally couldn’t anymore, yanking backwards, his chest heaving. "Stars," he gasped. Venus's lips twitched. “Stars,” he repeated, “Bloody stars.” He grasped at Venus’s arms and felt surprisingly still-warm skin under his fingers, dragging them until his jaw clenched. “How are you still warm?”
He rolled his eyes.
“Atmosphere,” he muttered—and Uranus couldn’t help his eyes flicking down to his mouth and then right back up to his eyes. “At least it’s useful for something.”
Uranus regrettably leaned back when he leaned forward, watching as he quirked a brow.
“What?”
“Is this—Are you—mate, you’re infuriating, you know that? You're hot and you're prickly and you followed me across the galaxy because you saw a painting I did, and you never—you never said anything—?!”
“You’ve been sketching and staring at me for just as long, and you never said anything,” Venus pointed out, kiss-bitten lips turning up in one corner. “Why’s this all on me?”
He opened and closed his mouth, searching for an answer.
“Fair,” Uranus finally grumbled. “But still. Is this… Do you mean it? Or are you just kissing me to kiss me?” Please be something. He didn’t know how much he wanted it until he had the opportunity in front of him, and now… stars, he wanted it. Wanted it even with Venus staring at him like he was an absolute lunatic. “Mate?”
Venus leaned forward, and this time he didn’t lean back, letting him close the distance between them.
“Fine,” he groaned, voice rough and gravelly, “I want this. I want you. That enough?”
Uranus wound his arms around his neck, grinned, and dragged him right back in for another kiss in answer.