Chapter Text
2016. Three years before the petrification event.
The door unlocks with a muffled click. Grocery bags rustle beyond it, confirming to Stanley that his partner does, in fact, intend to make the occasion special, despite their prior agreement not to make a fuss.
He remains seated by the kitchen window, taking a slow drag of his cigarette while watching the lazy evening traffic outside Xeno’s apartment building. An odd feeling settles over him as he takes in such an ordinary view. He has spent too many consecutive days on assignment to find it entirely normal.
A little ash falls onto the windowsill, and he swipes it away before the apartment's resident gets a chance to lecture him. There used to be an ashtray here, but Xeno helpfully got rid of it when Stan half-committed to quit smoking.
A true gentleman.
The scientist enters the room, at last, and lets out a dramatic sigh.
“At ease, soldier,” Xeno orders, placing a paper bag on the counter.
No familiar grocery store branding. Not ordinary shopping, then.
Stanley looks back at him with a feigned indifference, crossing his legs and leaning further into the chair as if to demonstrate that no human being alive could possibly be more at ease than he already is.
“Houston.”
“I brought something I know you’ve been desperately craving.”
“A fresh pack of reds?” Stanley guesses. He idly taps the nearly empty pack sitting beside him. Two cigarettes remain. It will not last him long.
“No.” Xeno looks down at him, triumphant. “Gossip. Highly classified.”
The grocery bag yields its contents one by one: a bottle of fine aged rum, a bar of dark chocolate, a beautiful wedge of aged gouda, plump red grapes, and roasted almonds.
“And something to celebrate my dear friend’s return, naturally,” Xeno adds. “To sweeten the deal.”
Stanley rises with a quiet hum and steps closer. The cigarette remains between his fingers. A playful grin on the scientist’s face softens as Stanley reaches him, gently tilting his chin upward before pressing a warm, bitter-tasting kiss against his lips. When they part, neither moves very far.
Xeno smiles again, lightly brushing Stanley’s shoulder with his hand.
“My. Weren’t you planning to stop smoking those?” He nods toward the cigarette.
“I did, for a little while.” Stanley reaches over, and shakes the ash off into the kitchen sink, without looking away.
“Is that right?” Xeno asks. “Can you actually quit for good, or would it take a collapse of the tobacco industry for me to get that flavor out of your mouth?”
Stan shrugs.
“What flavor are you hoping for?”
“Hmm.” Xeno leans up for another brief kiss, pausing afterward as if evaluating the taste more critically. “Just one of you living a healthy non-shortened lifespan, I suppose.”
Stanley snorts. He takes another long drag before moving over to open a cabinet. He easily maneuvers around his exasperated partner, and brings down two glasses and a charcuterie board.
“Hyakugai atte, ichiri nashi.” The scientist sighs, with exaggerated tragedy.
Stan clicks his tongue.
“Yup, I know that tone.”
“You don’t know the proverb.”
“I know you’re about to make me learn another language you picked up from your foreign colleagues. I'm not trying to become an ambassador.”
“V razvedke prigoditsa.”
They both snicker.
Without having to coordinate further, they each start on a separate task to prepare the plate. Stanley puts out the cigarette and fetches a knife, moving on to unwrap the cheese. Meanwhile, Xeno rinses the grapes, inspecting each bunch with perhaps more scrutiny than the situation warrants.
Stanley glances over.
“Are you… sorting them?”
"Just removing the bruised ones."
"They all taste the same after a couple glasses."
"They objectively do not. You can learn to appreciate some nuance."
Stanley regards him for a second.
He then plucks a grape from the bunch and flicks it at Xeno's forehead. As it bounces back, he catches it neatly in his mouth.
The scientist watches the grape disappear with a completely blank expression. It takes him a moment to fully comprehend the maneuver that just occurred.
"Did you just throw fruit at me?"
Stanley chews thoughtfully, then nods.
"Good grapes."
"That was not an answer."
"It was a review.” Stan shrugs. There is a pause. "...You should try one."
“Stan—"
Another grape appears between Stanley's fingers.
Xeno watches it rise.
"Are you seriously—"
The grape arcs across the small distance between them. Against his better judgment, Xeno catches it. He carefully bites through the sweet juicy flesh. A moment passes.
“...Hm.”
He tilts his head, considering.
“Your face says you like it,” Stanley observes.
“I do.” Xeno sighs. “But you have to be aware of how bizarre that was.”
Stanley accepts this with the quiet satisfaction of someone who considers the matter settled.
“What’s bizarre is that you insist on buying the most expensive rum for a casual night indoors.”
“I insist on buying the correct rum, for the correct occasion.”
He uncorks the bottle, pours two fingers for each of them, and offers a glass to Stanley. The soldier raises his eyebrows curiously and takes a sip.
“...Yeah.” He nods, a moment later.
“Yeah.” Xeno echoes, smug.
“I take your point.” He sets the glass down.
“Do you now?”
“You probably matched all these with some flavor profile equation, huh?“
“It’s called psychophysics.”
“Walking around the store with a calculator, comparing all of these on a microchemical level.”
“The chemistry is in the food, the pairing happens in your olfactory cortex. Your brain tends to like certain sequences of flavors."
“You know my brain.”
“Among other things.”
Xeno takes a small piece of cheese from the crumbly stack and sits down at the table.
“Tell me about your trip back.” He takes a small sip before continuing. “Did you wrap up everything nicely?”
“Good as it can be with our captain.”
“Still convinced he knows your platoon better than you, I’m guessing.”
“He promoted himself to giving advice.”
Xeno grimaces. Stan allows himself a small laugh.
“It was fine. We sorted it out. And I'm here now.” He breaks off a piece of chocolate and hands half of it to Xeno, before sitting beside him.
“Now you.” He demands. “There was supposed to be gossip.”
“Right. The absolute disgrace the DoD puts us through, honestly.” Xeno pops the chocolate into his mouth, letting it melt while he pours both of them another finger. "They assigned another liaison."
"The colonel?"
"The replacement.” The scientist rolls his eyes. “The man has very confident opinions. Intolerable. I explained that his preferred vendor couldn’t manufacture to tolerance, and he proceeded to spend the better part of an hour explaining procurement timelines to me."
“How generous of him.”
“I tried reasoning. He informed me that I needed to appreciate operational realities.”
Stanley smiles the way he does when considering someone who almost deserved to be shot.
“I’m assuming you laughed at him.”
“Oh, no.” Xeno’s expression turns more severe. "It would’ve been funny if he had not been wasting the resources of the entire facility and terrorising researchers. I got him to sign the order exactly as written. Once we fail the inspection, they’ll be sending him off to D.C., where someone else can explain consequences to him.”
“Efficient.” Stan approves.
“Temporary.” Xeno scoffs. “They’ll just continue sending us a different version of the same person. A famous name. A convenient military background. Someone with a reputation for success who has never actually had to understand the work being done beneath them.”
“Well. Promotable people get promoted. Makes sense why they're all the same.” Stanley takes another sip, musing. “Qualification only gets you halfway. The rest is convincing the right people you belong with them.” He glances at Xeno. “Otherwise, that is one steep climb.”
“Heh.” Xeno considers this, then smiles faintly. “Bullseye as always. Maybe we better get some climbing gear then.”
For a while, the room becomes quiet. Not uncomfortable, just quiet. Xeno carefully reaches for the other’s hand.
“Somehow it’s always us against the brutes that set the norms, huh?”
“Yup.”
Stan squeezes the offered hand, and places his second-to-last cigarette between his lips with the other. Xeno silently reaches for the lighter, flicks the flame to life and holds it steady until Stanley’s cigarette catches.
Smoke curls between them.
“With how things are working out…” Xeno looks down at their joined hands. “Do you think it would ever make sense for us to stop being... discreet?”
“Discreet?” Stan echoes the word more than the question.
“Beyond simply appearing together in public. Having spare clothes at each other's place. Booking one bed instead of two when we travel. You know.” He smiles faintly “The infamous Don't Ask, Don't Tell is a thing of the past, supposedly.”
Stanley doesn’t answer. Instead he turns the cigarette slowly between his fingers.
Once.
Twice.
The ember glows brighter.
“...Is that what you want?” Stanley finally asks.
Xeno tilts his head and shrugs ambiguously, still watching the other with a soft but deliberate look. “Do you?”
Stanley hesitates, just a second too long. He had answered faster when Xeno asked him to switch departments, to go into classified work together. He'd been faster to make decisions that measured in lives.
“If it matters to you.”
Xeno thinks about it for a moment.
Then he smiles, almost apologetically, and shakes his head.
“No. No, it doesn't. That is a questionable ambition, if anything.”
He waves away the thought with a small movement of his hand. His voice is much more gentle than before. “In another world, perhaps.”
Stanley studies his partner for a bit longer, idly stroking the back of his hand.
“I think we're lucky where we are.” Stan concludes.
“How so?”
“In this time, in this country… people mostly leave us alone.”
“They leave us alone because we're difficult to categorize.” Xeno lets out another soft breath. “You're a handsome career soldier. I'm an eccentric engineer with an attractive NDA and questionable social instincts.” He smiles, without much amusement. “People explain us away. But if we were to actually become, well… a couple? Or, heaven forbid, something more permanent, then…”
“Can’t explain away that.”
Xeno nods.
“And we both know our competition would absolutely love to use that as leverage.”
“I see what you mean.”
“...If you don't make Captain next year,” Xeno continues quietly, “I would rather it was because you decided your talents belonged somewhere else. Not because the promotion board needed an excuse.”
“That's an eloquent way of saying the promotion board would always go for the second-best man, as long as no one ever touched his prostate.”
Xeno laughs despite himself.
“Crude.”
“Accurate.”
“Well... yes.”
”NASA isn't exactly immune to preconceptions either, as I'm aware.” Stanley takes another drag. “I remember hearing about the Apollo-Soyuz docking controversy. The arguments over which spacecraft was supposed to be… receiving, and which penetrating. Hell of an insecurity, huh?”
Xeno snorts into his glass.
“I had forgotten that.”
“Couldn't have one side looking submissive.”
“That’s not what happened.” Xeno shakes his head. “Military commentators made a bigger deal of that than the engineers did. The actual problem was practical.”
“Figures.” Stanley nods.
“They developed what’s called the Androgynous Peripheral Attach System. A remarkably sensible piece of engineering. It created an interface where neither spacecraft had to be permanently active or permanently passive.”
Stanley carefully lifts up the other’s hand. Without interrupting him, he places a soft kiss on his knuckles. Xeno’s eyes move down, almost involuntarily, tracking his partner's lips.
“…It meant neither side had to submit. Showcased their mutual competence. Made their cooperation more meaningful...”
The soldier rotates his hand, lightly kissing each finger in turn. Xeno's thumb brushes through Stanley's hair.
“…More elegant.”
He realizes he stopped explaining.
Stanley notices him trail off just the same and grins.
“So?” He probes, patiently, clearly pleased. “What was the final arrangement then?”
“...Well. Soyuz was in orbit first. So Apollo had to chase it down, and perform the docking. I guess America was, in a way, dominant, after all, if that's what you're wondering.”
“Sounds like romance in diplomacy is not dead.”
Stanley lifts his eyes, meeting Xeno’s look, and leans his cheek against his hand.
“If it's on your mind, you'll find it in the oddest of places.”
“Says the man comparing us to orbital mechanics.”
“I was discussing interface standards.” Xeno chuckles, brushing the other's skin softly with his thumb.
Stanley smiles coyly, and closes his eyes. Neither of them says anything for a while. But this silence feels different now.
Complete.
Eventually, Xeno leans across the table and kisses the top of Stanley's head.
“I still smell like the office. Mind if I salvage that before the evening continues?”
Stanley hums softly.
“Go ahead. I’ll protect the remaining rum.”
He watches as Xeno pulls back and heads towards the shower.
Then takes another swig from his glass.
“I'll catch you in orbit.”