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You are a rational man. You have, for a very long time, prided yourself on your ability to place reality before subjectivity, facts before emotion. You have spent a century and change trying to survive in the world you ended, and where your heart has failed you many, many times, your mind never has.
You are a rational man.
You are also a man who has been alone on a moon colony built to accommodate approximately four hundred people for months now. You try not to resent the fact that it hardly makes a difference at all. And you are, as should be obvious by now, a man who has experienced companionship very few times in your life.
Which leaves you without very many options, and in a pinch… magical simulations will do just fine. Frederick brushes his knuckles gently over your jaw, and you— you were scarcely so bold when you were younger, but you catch his hand in yours just to press a kiss to his palm like you always wanted to. He always did love your hands— he used to spend those precious, quiet moments in your dorm room tracing his fingers along the joints just to study how they move.
You understand it more these days. He watches you pull away, circling the pad of your thumb over where you’d kissed him like putting pressure on a wound. You brush your fingers over the creases in his palms and try not to think about how his hands must have calloused over the years, but…
But you lack the sensory stimuli to back up that hypothesis. It’s a small but frustrating inaccuracy, that’s all.
You look up to find him already watching you, brow furrowed slightly. “Stop it.”
You freeze, shame crashing over you in a devastating wave. This… this was a bad idea, how could you ever think he would—
“You’re thinkin’ too much,” Frederick grumbles softly, his hand settling at the curve of your waist. You’re glad you remembered to make his hands warm this time. For a moment, you’re 20 again instead of coming up on 200, in a slightly too small dorm room instead of a sleeping quarters so spacious and empty it’s starting to drive you a bit mad, and those warm, clever hands can fix just about anything. “Cut that shit out.”
You laugh. You can’t help yourself. He’s always been good at that, making you not think so much.
He leans down to kiss just beneath your jaw, smiling against your skin as he presses forward until your back hits the mattress, outlined by a shimmering cloak of stars. You reach up to brush your hand against his throat, just beneath his chin where you know there should be a small, circular scar, one you’ve very deliberately excluded. Since you’re already giving grace to the small inaccuracies, you might as well. There’s a brief, nauseating moment where you remember seeing it for the first time– your stomach turning as you think about all that a bullet wound beneath the jaw implies. You crush the thought like you have so many times before.
You card a hand through his hair. It’s short again. It is a shame, though, you’d always liked longer hair on him— he’d tried to grow it out briefly, back in college. You and Aria both loved it that way, falling messily into his eyes and just barely long enough to get a decent grip on— that, you’re sure he loved too. He’d cut it off for some fundraiser filled with faces you can no longer remember.
You were such a child, back then. Chasing personal gratification as if your own stubborn ambition would never catch up to you. You were a fool.
The ghost of the last man who loved you’s teeth scrape against your throat, planting an eager, open-mouthed kiss against your pulse. You are so old now, but perhaps you are a fool still.
“Frederick,” You murmur softly, though you can’t bring yourself to push him away. He makes a low, rumbling sound of acknowledgement, pulling back to tuck his head down against your collarbone. You’ve always had a hard time looking him in the eyes, but especially now. You are sickeningly sure he knows that just as well as you do.
You breathe in a soft, steady cycle, doing the best you can to soothe your buzzing nerves. Frederick’s thumb traces gentle circles against your hip.
“I…” You deflate against the mattress, defeated. This is bad, even for you. “We can’t. I can’t. I’m sorry.”
Frederick pulls back, expression dropping to a frown. He studies you for a long, terrible moment that makes you feel like a moth pinned to a cork board, squirming under those sharp brown eyes, before he rolls off of you to lay by your side. You shudder out a long, trembling sigh, staring up at the too-tall glass ceiling. You still can’t look at him, but without his hands against your skin or his steady weight on top of you it feels like there’s barely anything at all to stop you from floating out into that empty expanse of stars. You squeeze your eyes shut.
“I’m not an idiot, Asuka,” He growls, low and frustrated. “I know what this is.”
Your breath catches, eyes flying open in a panic. He— he can’t know. That should be impossible. “I— Frederick, I’m afraid I don’t know what you—“
“You know I can spot a summoning spell a thousand miles away,” He interrupts, always so uninterested in your excuses. It was stupid, stupid, stupid of you to think that Frederick wouldn’t figure it out, artificial though he may be. “I was there when you made that one, dumbass.”
And yet…
“Then why—“ You choke, gritting your teeth. “Then why do all this?”
“Because it’s what he would do,” He answers, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world, like the thought of it doesn’t send your head spinning.
All of a sudden your chest feels tight– the thought of Frederick, here, real and breathing and touching you with warm, calloused hands–
You dig your nails into your arms so hard it stings. It’s what he would do rattles around in your chest, battering against the inside of your rib cage. If he were here, if he could, he would touch you in those little ways that make you feel human, he would pull you back from your spiraling thoughts and hold you here, a steady anchor to make sure the stars don’t whisk you away into the endless, endless nothing. You try to bury the thought but it’s too much and you can’t, you can’t, you can’t– your hands clench and unclench, shaky breaths coming faster now and it’s too much–
“I destroyed him,” You whisper, voice trembling under the violent onslaught of emotion that you wish would just leave you alone.
You can feel him staring at you. You bite your lip so hard you start to taste blood.
“I never said he makes good decisions.”
You break. The sob that rips from your throat is heavy and strangled, your hand instinctively clamping over your mouth. You hate this, you hate this, you don’t know why he always does this to you and just the remembering was bad enough but now he’s here, and you’re an idiot for thinking this could fix anything. You spent so, so long chasing ghosts, and now you did it and they’re back together and surely settling down somewhere in the slowly healing rubble of the world you destroyed, and here you are, still clinging to a slowly fading memory. An ugly, spiteful feeling burns in the pit of your stomach even if you know that this is exactly what you deserve.
Frederick heaves out a sigh, draping an arm around your waist to pull you in towards his chest, your shaking hands clutching fistfuls of his shirt with another shuddering sob. And you are a fool who only burrows in closer.
Time becomes… blurry. You are a man very accustomed to meticulously counting seconds, casting complex spells that too often demand your full attention, but here everything warps into fuzzy, liquid shape. You don’t know how long it takes for you to exhaust yourself, or for the shame to kick in, or for that shame to become cloaked in the familiar weight of comfortable numbness.
You just know that he hasn’t let go of you yet.
“I…” You croak, voice infuriatingly small. “I apologize. I didn’t think…”
Frederick makes a soft, dismissive sound, tugging you in impossibly closer.
“Save it,” He murmurs roughly, that tinge of gravel in his voice but tone undeniably soft, familiar in a way that would nauseate you if you weren’t so worn out that the guilt can barely touch you anymore. Instead, something close to relief sweeps through you as he reaches up to brush the bangs out of your eyes. “Just get some goddamn rest already, would ya?”
That’s… yes. You can do that. You nod softly into his shoulder, eyes sliding shut as you surrender to a sleep you can only pray is dreamless.
You knew he would be gone when you woke up. The spell is only built to sustain a projection for short bursts, and even then, drawing from your personal well of magic means it would almost certainly sputter out upon you losing consciousness. This, you were prepared for.
There is, however, still a strange hollowness settling in your stomach as you wake up in an empty bed. You’ll have to make note of that— perhaps a large withdrawal of magic during a moment of emotional stress is causing some lingering effects.
You roll onto your back, staring up at the glass ceiling above you once again. The stars shimmer. The earth stares back at you.
… Maybe one day. You vowed to leave and never come back, after all, and you’ve never been good at keeping your promises.