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Luna didn’t even notice it until he’d already stopped.
Curled up on his side and clinging to the lingering comfort that remaining in Earth’s orbit brought him, he’d been so mired in his own thoughts—the repeating, looping reminder that Earth was gone, that his planet was lightyears away and probably wouldn't ever return, that Earth was undoubtedly lost wherever in the galaxy he’d been flung to—that Luna nearly forgot he had a body at all. At least until he snapped back into himself at the gentle tug of another being’s gravity, snapped back into place with the rebound force of an asteroid hurled at his face and realized he’d stopped breathing, and he—
He wheezed on his first painful-sounding breath.
Luna forgot even the fact that someone else’s gravity had pulled him from his trance in the first place as his attention zoned entirely in on the fact that he hadn’t been breathing and hadn’t even noticed, and—and yes, he didn’t need to breathe, but he’d inherited, learned it from Earth, and if doing that kept even a little piece of his planet—his brother, his only family—around, then by every star in the galaxy he was going to keep—!
“Hey! Hey, Luna, calm down,” a familiar voice said, interrupting his spiraling thoughts with another barely-there tug of gravity. “I’m sorry, dude, did I startle you?”
He blinked hard and haltingly turned around.
Mars stared with a knitted brow, leaning in towards him with one hand paused mid-air.
“W-What?” Luna managed, sucking in another desperate, unneeded breath. “No.”
Eyes flicking over his face, Mars’s mouth drew into a thin line; quickly, Luna lifted one fist and rubbed harshly under one eye, ignoring the sting.
(It probably did nothing, anyway. Whatever tear tracks Mars saw on his face were practically engraved there at this point, nothing he could do about it just like there was nothing he could do about—
Earth
—anything at all.)
“Just thought I’d… check on you,” Mars said, straightening up with a faint frown. “See if you were alright.”
Luna sniffed, rubbing a little harder under his opposite eye. “As if.” He dropped his hand and let it settle exactly where he usually found it, wrapped around his necklace; he did it so often these days the edges were showing signs of wear, his own hands indented with a thin line where it dug in against his skin. “I’m doing.”
“Doing, huh?” Mars’s mouth twitched in a half-smile that disappeared as quickly as it showed up.
He just ducked his head and rubbed his thumb along the round edge of his necklace, studying Earth’s symbol even as his core ached as hard as always, like someone had sharpened an asteroid into a knife-point and stuck it through his chest. “Yeah. Doing.” Both of them sat in near-silence for some time, only interrupted by the sound of his own noisy breathing as he kept it going, reminding his own body to keep up the useless habit.
(It wasn’t useless. It was a… a reminder.)
“Can I come over there? And sit with you?”
Luna’s head jerked back up; he couldn’t help a frown even at the sight of Mars’s awkward attempt at a smile. “Are you going to try and make me leave Earth’s orbit again? I’m not doing that. This is—!”
Mars threw both hands up.
“No! Of course not, dude! I totally understand not—I’m sorry about that before.” He pressed one hand to his opposite arm and winced. “I was trying to help, and I thought I knew better enough to force you to do something you weren’t ready for. I won’t do it again, promise. Cross my core.”
Shoulders slumping, Luna squeezed his necklace and hesitantly nodded.
Mars crossed the space between them and settled at his side with a tired-sounding sigh. He barely paid attention to him, too focused on regulating the speed and strength of his own breathing. In. Out. In. Out. In— Another pull from Mars’s gravity made him lose concentration completely, and as he snapped his head over to ask him to stop, his gaze landed on the pale lines ghosting Mars’s forearm where he’d rolled his sweater sleeves up, and instead his core twisted, words catching in his throat.
Sorry, he wanted to say. He felt more than a little off thinking back to it now, how easily he’d hurt Mars.
“I forgot what it felt like to not do that,” Mars said abruptly.
Luna inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, looked at Mars, exhaled. “To breathe? Like the…?” He couldn’t say it out loud, but luckily for him Mars understood exactly what he was trying to say. Met with a nod and Mars pressing one hand against his own chest, he squeezed his necklace until the edges dug in harder. “I’m scared of losing it,” he admitted, whispering rather than saying it aloud. It felt like acknowledging the fear too loudly would only make it come true quicker. “It’s all—It’s an Earth thing.” A fresh stab of pain rippled through him at the name, a feeling he’d grown familiar with. “If I stop, what do I have left?”
He almost expected Mars to tell him, “You’re not making any sense.”
“Trust me,” Mars told him instead, hesitating before he leaned over, bumping their shoulders together. “I understand.” A familiar burn pricked behind Luna's eyes, and he turned his head away, though he made no move to pull back from Mars's closeness. “It’s nice to have something to focus on, isn’t it? To remember him a little easier?” This time when he glanced back at him, Mars looked down at his hands, a far-away glaze in his eyes like he wasn’t really there. “Have… something?”
Luna could recognize it easily; he’d dealt with it often enough.
Easier to bury himself in memories than look at the actual state of things.
Instead of reaching out to Mars, or saying anything (what would he say?), Luna just inhaled, and exhaled, and inhaled, and exhaled, and let each breath slowly drag him along into a far more relaxed state; and before long he realized Mars had picked it up right alongside him, every inhale and exhale matching his. He finally let himself lean in a little more against Mars’s shoulder, and neither of them acknowledged it.
They just stared into the distant dark and both remembered the same planet.