Work Text:
When you are seven years old, you discover a video that your brother left you.
This is not especially novel; your brother left you a number of videos when he was preparing the apartment you would come to live in. He read to you as a child, he told you about his films, he spoke sparingly about his life and plans for the future. He told you about how he would have taken care of you if you had arrived at your scheduled time. He doesn’t say it, but you feel that he loved you.
This video is not novel because he is speaking to you, no. It is different because in it, he looks at the camera and tells you that you are not alone. There is one singular human also on Earth with you.
Her name is Roxy. She’s your age. She’s the daughter of your Bro’s friend, Rose – he left you copies of her books, but he’s not sure if you’re old enough to understand them yet – that makes her Roxy Lalonde. He thinks you two should be friends.
He doesn’t tell you how to contact her. Says he’ll leave that up to you; you’re a smart kid, and he believes in you. You swell with pride, young and easily flattered when you have no defence against praise, and resolve to start looking. You do not talk back to the video to tell him that you have read his friend Rose’s books, and you think you understood them just fine, even though there’s a pause between his sentences that seems perfectly tailored for you to slot yourself into.
Your Bro says it will take a while, but you’ll meet her in person one day. You don’t question how he knows this; he’s known everything else so far. He knew you would be here, even when he wasn’t. He knew you would love orange soda and robots and puppets, and he made sure to leave those things for you. He knew your name would be Dirk. Now he knows that one day you’ll meet Roxy Lalonde. You won’t be alone.
You trust him.
❖ ❖ ❖
You meet Roxy Lalonde a year after your Bro tells her about her, when you’re eight years old. She’s the one who finds you; you try not to feel strange about that and mostly succeed.
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 14:35
TG: hi
TG: are u maybe
TG: alive
TG: and dirk strider????!?!
TT: Hi. Yes.
TT: Are you Roxy Lalonde?
TG: yes yes yes yes!!!!!!!!!!!
TG: i rlly ddnt think this would work omg
TG: omg omg
TT: Cool.
TT: ...
TT: I'm freaking out a little bit, I think.
TG: me too
TT: I've never spoken to another human being in my life.
TG: me TOO!!!!!
You two are fast friends, once you get over the initial awkwardness. It helps knowing that however lost you were feeling trying to fake as though you know how to act human, she’s probably feeling the same way. The two of you consolidate what you know from your respective guardians; you tell her what little your Bro told you, and she returns the favour.
Where your Bro was vague in the details of how he knew what he knew, it seems Roxy’s mom was more direct, because she was the reason they knew anything. Roxy tells you of her mom’s visions, and how they would turn out to be true. She tells you about how she knew that one day, two children would find themselves 400 years in the future all alone, and that they had to make sure they were able to survive.
She tells you that her mom told her that the two of you are important, and will do something important. This important thing is how you will meet, she says. You just have to be patient; it won’t be too long now. Her mom says you two will face a great challenge “as children”; neither of you can imagine you’ll be considered children for much longer. You’d probably be hesitant to describe yourself in that way even now.
You trust your bro, and he trusted Roxy’s mom. What she said is similar enough to what your Bro said. You want to believe it, so you do.
The two of you keep talking until Roxy falls asleep. She warns you she might, so you’re not alarmed by her responses dropping off. Mostly. Part of you can’t shake the feeling that something has happened – that you finally spoke to another human being just to have them immediately disappear. She left the chat window open when she fell asleep, and you type your thoughts to her when you think they’re worthy of sharing so you can see her idle message and reassure yourself that you didn’t imagine her.
Cal has migrated next to you over the course of the night. You tuck yourself against his side, as cool as can be, and entertain yourself with the idea of curling up next to real body warmth one day.
❖ ❖ ❖
Years pass. You and Roxy stay best friends. You turn thirteen and Roxy is contacted by an alien, bringing both of your social circles up to two whole other people. That alien puts you two in contact with two other kids your age, four hundred years in the past. She says that they are critical to your future. She thinks you’ll all be great friends, and even though she only speaks to you over text you imagine she says it similarly to how your Bro did when he told you about Roxy.
Just like him, she’s right. Jane and Jake become parts of your life that you quickly can’t imagine how you previously lived without. They don’t understand the specifics of your life – Jake believes that you live 400 years in the future, but Jane is sceptical when Roxy lets the fact slip. Still, you adapt. You speak of your Bro and Roxy’s mom as though they’re somewhat neglectful but still present figures in your lives. You pretend to be homeschooled. You don’t tell Jane about the movie you watched that was released in 2031, even though you think she’d like it.
It grows tiring. Waiting and trusting that somehow, someday, your guardians would be correct and you wouldn’t be alone gets repetitive, and day after day passes in the exact same way, the differences slight enough to be non-existent. Whether you catch salmon or cod for dinner, whether you rap or draw, whether you can bring yourself to change your clothes or not – you’re tired of pretending it means anything.
Early into your thirteenth year, similarly tired by isolation and faking all the details of her life, Roxy pesters you one night. The notification sounds from your computer as you’re tinkering with the television you’ve taken apart and reassembled countless times already, each time with slightly better specifications.
tipsyGnostalgic [TG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 22:21
TG: di stri
TG: whatre we gon do
TG: if theyrd wrong
TG: *theyre
TT: If who’s wrong?
TG: my mom
TG: ur bro
TG: i keep tjinking abt it
TG: tge game nvr happens and were stuck alone corever
TG: *soooo many typos
TT: …
TT: I think about it too.
TT: Your mom thought we would land with them for a while, right? My Bro said that.
TT: But she was wrong, and we ended up here.
TT: She has to be the reason they know we have some cosmic destiny at all, but she could have been wrong about that too.
TT: Or maybe that will also happen 400 years too late.
TG: thats soooo unfair
TG: wven if we never see janey and jake
TG: if our destiny schmestiny is fake im mackicjing myself to u
TG: we can be besties IRL yes
TT: Heh.
TT: Your place seems nicer than here.
TT: Maybe I’ll build a boat and figure out some way to cross the ocean.
TG: yesssss yes yes
TG: plz
TG: i can show u all my CATS and the carapas and pumkin
TG: and u can b superrrr awks and cutesies bcuz u have no idea how humans work
TT: Neither do you. I doubt you’ll be any better than I will.
TG: yh but i will power thru and give u hugs anyway
TG: whereass u will freak out in ur brain foreverrrr and ever
You and Roxy put a number on it. If you reach the old human age of maturity - the age at which in some cultures you would be expected to leave the house anyway - without any magical friend-connecting bullshit happening then you would make it happen yourself.
As eighteen comes closer, you grow antsy. You had hoped, most ardently, that your pessimism would be proven wrong. Still, the years pass and nothing happens.
You turn sixteen, and Roxy turns sixteen the day after. Despite the number you two had set being a couple years away, you have to admit that you had hope for sixteen; your guardians hadn’t said anything specific about it, or any year, but a friend with other strange foreknowledge seemed to hint at it being an important year. You do not pester her immediately, but one day, late at night, you break.
timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering uranianUmbra [UU] at 3:57
TT: Hey.
TT: I know you can't tell us much about our futures. Or anything, really.
TT: I just wanted to ask a question.
TT: You made it sound like something was gonna happen when we were sixteen.
UU: that doesn't soUnd mUch like a qUestion to me!
TT: Is it still happening?
UU: hehe. dirk, there is no need to worry. ^u^
UU: there is still time before yoU will all meet.
UU: bUt it will happen, rest assUred!
TT: Okay.
TT: I hope you're right, UU.
You settle slightly, but not fully. Soon after, UU disappears and takes her knowledge of the future with her. She is uncontactable, despite the best efforts of both yourself and Roxy – if it had been just you trying, you think there could have been doubt as to her fate, but with Roxy working on it too, the total lack of information seems damning.
Seventeen passes similarly.
You get to working on a boat. You troll the ancient human internet incessantly, seeing what worked and what didn’t.
timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] at 23:11
TT: Trying to find something that doesn't immediately start with "you need a shit ton of wood" is driving me fuckin' crazy. Everyone says I need a shit ton of wood.
TT: That's going to be kinda hard, considering the amount I currently have access to.
TT: Which is none.
TG: fckkkkkk
TG: foiled at litrally step 1
TG: i ahve some trees i wish i chose the sendifificator
TT: Yeah, this would have been a lot more convenient if I had an appearifier right about now.
TT: I'm sure we can still make this work, I just need to brainstorm.
TT: Hal’s being no help at all, so I'm assuming I'm missing something completely obvious that he's laughing himself to server death over.
TG: is hovrboard not an option :(
TT: Nah. That was my first serious idea too, but 99% chance it loses juice right in the middle of the ocean and I fall to my death.
TG: :(((((((((((((
TG: tht would b so convenint tho
TG: smth u already got
TG: dw tho
TG: rolals on the case
TG: ill find ur solution
TT: Hell yes.
TT: There's no way I can fail with Ro-Lal on the case.
TG: ...
TG: ...
TT: ...?
TG: dirky my best bro
TG: have u not seen anything saying to builf
TG: out of aluminiumum
TT: Seriously?
TG: https://web.archive.org/web/20251208004934/https://adventuremarine.ca/7-tips-to-building-an-aluminum-boat-successfully-the-first-time/
TG: first option when i searcbhed
TG: build boat no wood
TT: ...
TT: Jesus fuckin' Christ.
TT: I'll get to welding. I guess.
You get to welding.
❖ ❖ ❖
You work in increments. This is going to take longer than you thought it would – previous projects hadn’t prepared you for how much effort you were going to have to put into this one. Your robots are all straight, easy lines; now you need to cut strange, curved shapes. You need to work at blistering temperatures. You need to learn how to make something buoyant; you’ve never had to consider that in your life. You’ve always been buoyant enough without any work.
You think that maybe dying on the way to meet Roxy wouldn’t be a terrible way to go, if only it wouldn’t riddle her with guilt. You’d die unfulfilled and alone but that would happen anyway if you didn’t try. It feels more honourable than getting got by drones alone on your roof or dying of malnutrition, which both have always felt slightly too likely to happen.
Roxy would never forgive you or herself, though. You triple check all your calculations and then get Hal to check them again, just to be sure. You research until your head swims. You’re good at this when it’s something you care about, but you find absolutely nothing about naval craft especially inherently interesting. Despite a love of swimming and a reliance on the ocean for food, you usually try your best to think about water as little as possible if you have the choice.
All the more reason to get away from your apartment. Roxy’s still on the coast but she’s not surrounded by water like you are. You could touch land. She even has plants and grass; you’ve never seen that shit in your life.
Without the promise of some cosmic destiny foretold by your 400-year-old guardians, your life is quite small. You’re the last human boy on earth, making a plan to meet the last human girl on earth, and you’re excited to go for a walk outside.
You’re sweating in your tank top from the heat you need to work with. You feel disgusting, hair sticking to your forehead and skin sticky. You think you’ve done all you can for the day; your stomach is aching in the way that signals that the last time you ate was far too long ago, and your thoughts are racing. You step back and flip up your visor, rolling your shoulders.
Your whole apartment is boiling. You open every window, deciding the smell of salt and sound of waves is preferable over this. As you walk past your computer, you notice some forest green text has appeared on your screen.
golgothasTerror [GT] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 13:40
GT: Hello dirk!
GT: Roxy tells me that youre the two of you are trying to make your ways to each other?
GT: Thats awfully exciting if so.
GT: Not that i think she would lie of course.
GT: It just seems somewhat impractical, though if anyone could do it im sure it would be you!
TT: It is quite impractical, you're right.
TT: I'm going crazy trying to figure this out.
GT: Is that so.
GT: Must be quite perplexing if youre actually letting it slip that youre stumped!
TT: You're right.
TT: I meant to say it's a fuckin' walk in the park, bro. Easiest shit of my life.
GT: Im sure thats the case.
GT: Well either way between you and roxy im sure youll figure it out in no time.
GT: Just dont forget about the rest of us folk when youre together!
TT: I'm sure Roxy and I will get bored of each other eventually and need the reprieve of speaking to other people.
TT: No need to worry.
GT: Oh i doubt that.
GT: You havent gotten sick of each other yet even though you were each others only options for a while.
TT: Bro.
GT: Bro.
TT: ...
TT: If we could find a way to transport ourselves 400 years in the past, we would.
GT: Haha. *fans face*.
GT: I must say im quite surprised about how open youve been with the old feelings today.
TT: Yeah. I don't know.
TT: I've been feeling very sentimental since I started working on this.
TT: I can't wait to get out of this shithole, but it's also all I've ever known. It's pretty strange.
GT: I can imagine it would be.
GT: I dont even know if given the chance i would want to leave my island.
TT: That's different, man. That place is a death trap.
GT: Yes well its my death trap and im quite fond of it!
You shoot the shit for a little longer, thankful for the distraction even as you start to feel somewhat guilty. In the excitement of poising to meet Roxy, you almost forgot that Jake is nearly as isolated as the two of you are, only 400 years in the past.
You continue to stare at the blank screen after he signs off, biting your lip. There’s nothing about Jake’s situation you can change, to your own chagrin. You doubt he’s itching for a new robot, and that’s about as far as your abilities in regard to him go at the moment.
You wish he would video call you again, sometimes. He used to when the two of you were younger and worse at dealing with your own loneliness; the two of you would sit and watch each other. You wouldn’t always talk – sometimes he talked for you, sometimes the two of you sat in silence. You used to watch movies together. You used to sit and watch each other work.
You like to consider yourself mostly over your teenage crush on Jake English, but when you’re not kidding yourself you know that’s not the case. You haven’t told him. What good would it be, when you two are separated by centuries of time? You’ve resolved yourself to this.
You imagine sometimes that this is how Roxy feels about you; the only option for her, available but still out of reach. You like to hope that she’s also extinguished her torch for you, but you’re not convinced. Roxy’s crush is another thing you can often find to beat yourself up over; you try to discourage her, but you’ll admit to yourself that you could be firmer about it. Part of you likes the attention, you think. It’s easier to stomach over text, but the idea of her flirting with you in person sort of makes your stomach turn in a way that you don’t like to think about.
It’s only a short time before your computer pings with a notification once again, this time displaying in a bright blue. You prepare yourself to have a similar conversation with Jane, seeing as Roxy’s apparently spilt the beans so quickly.
gutsyGumshoe [GG] started pestering timaeusTestified [TT] at 14:23
GG: Roxy tells me that the two of you are moving in together.
TT: That’s a way you could put it, I suppose.
TT: I’d prefer to wait until things are certainly happening before announcing it, but I suppose that ship’s sailed for both you and Jake now.
GG: Well, ignoring that you just implied if it was up to you we wouldn’t know anything about your lives...
GG: She coached it in a layer of future-talk.
GG: I didn’t appreciate the two of you trying to play me for a fool when we were 13 and I don’t appreciate it now, mister!
TT: Right. Sorry, Jane. I’ll tell her to stop.
GG: Thank you.
GG: It just leaves me feeling like she doesn’t have a lot of respect for me, quite honestly.
GG: Neither if you will tell me anything true about your lives, only this fake “apocalyptic future” story.
TT: …
TT: Yeah, that's our bad. We thought it would be funny when we were kids. I guess it's gone too far.
Roxy had always been the optimist out of the two of you, yet part of you is still disappointed every time Jane refuses to believe the most basic facts of your lives. You don’t blame her – if you were in her position, you would probably assume the strangers on the internet who told you they lived an an apocalyptic future were fucking with you too – but it’s disappointing, nonetheless.
You don’t know how much longer you can continue the act. You’re sure she knows she’s not aware of most of your lives, and surely one day she’ll demand answers that you can’t give.
Idly, you imagine what might happen if you really did die tragically on your way to Roxy. What would Jane believe happened to you? Would she ever find out the truth, or would she think you’d just grown tired of speaking to her?
You push away from your computer, feeling worse than you did before you abandoned your work for the day. Minihoof is dozing by your mouse, and you pause to give her a quick stroke. You’ll take her with you when you go, though you don’t know how yet. You can introduce her to Roxy’s cats. You entertain yourself by imagining her galloping across actual grass, and eventually you’re feeling better – enough that you can stand up and make your way to your kitchen to see if you’re in the mood to eat anything.
Your fridge is empty when you open it, and you curse yourself for forgetting that that’s what you were supposed to do today. It’s still light outside, only halfway through the day, but the idea of lowering yourself to sea level and fishing right now fills you with dread.
Usually you’re good about your routine, but since the possibility of escaping from it became something realistic you’ve let it fall to the wayside. It’s become more important in recent years, with the canned provisions your brother left for you running out around the time you turned sixteen.
You don’t feel too hungry, you suppose. You were planning to eat mainly to get your mind off your previous conversations. You resolve to go fishing tomorrow morning.
With that off the table, you’re not sure what to do until it’s an acceptable time to get in bed. You could draw or rap, but that feels somewhat like a waste of time; neither of these things has really entertained you for a while.
You sigh and return to your boat.
❖ ❖ ❖
You severely underestimated the time it would take to make a functional boat. You finish a painstaking several months later, confident enough to use a rope to descend it into the ocean. When it floats well enough there for a few days, you figure you believe in your mechanical skills enough to trust that it will get you where you need to go.
You text Roxy immediately, to great excitement, and then you set to gathering your things.
You create a pile in the middle of your bedroom. You look around analytically and decide that most things you could probably leave and not worry about. You have an empty row in your sylladex to work with, so you could probably find a way to just bundle everything into a pile of shit and make it rhyme with something you already have.
You use your shades to speak to Roxy as you gather your things, revelling in her excitement. It still hasn’t fully sunk in for you, you think. You’ll believe that you won’t be alone anymore when you can see her standing in front of you.
You take a last look at your room. You don’t consider yourself particularly sentimental, but you feel strange about abandoning your apartment. It was proof, you think, that somewhere in the past you’d had a Bro who cared about you enough to provide you with what you would need to survive. It’s where you’ve spent the last nineteen years, almost. These small, connected rooms are your entire life.
You shudder at the thought and pay attention to your mental checklist. You think Roxy’s keeping Jane updated – you should probably talk to her soon anyway – so you text Jake. His handle is greyed out, but you don’t want to wait until he’s online to leave.
timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering golgothasTerror [GT] at 19:35
TT: Yo.
TT: I finally finished that boat, if you can fuckin' believe it.
TT: I still don't.
TT: I'll let you know when I leave, but I might be off the grid for a while. I don't know how well WiFi will hold up in the middle of the ocean.
TT: ...
TT: Talk to you later, bro.
Then you set off.
It’s a long week alone, sailing from Houston to New York. You had estimated the time it would take based on the pre-established distance between the two cities before they were submerged, but you must have overestimated how fast your boat could go because it ends up being a few extra days.
You’re growing tired when finally you see land in the distance. You stand, stumbling to lean your weight against the mast as your vision blurs. You blink heavily as you ask Hal to zoom into your view.
You watch with bated breath as the image sharpens; first a green blur, then what seems like a colony, then, finally - a house you recognise. Surrounded by other cramped houses, one on top of the other, you’re fairly sure you recognise Roxy’s house stands above the rest, like it did in the pictures she’d sent to help you find your way. Your suspicions are confirmed when you’re able to open Pesterchum on your shades. You ignore the influx of messages to type one of your own to Roxy.
timaeusTestified [TT] started pestering tipsyGnostalgic [TG] at 10:41
TT: I think I’m here.
TG: oh my god omg kmgomgomgomgomg
TG: AAAAAAAAA !!!!!!!!!
She must be running as she texts as next thing you know there’s a blurry figure on the shore, jumping and waving at you. Your heart aches before you figure that no one else is around and break out into a grin and wave back. Roxy squeals. You think your eyes might be wet.
You can see her smile as you grow closer. You check the ships controls before squaring your shoulders and bracing yourself against the side of your boat. You watch her mouth drop as she realises what you’re about to do - or maybe Hal tells her - and you smirk at her laugh before launching yourself off the side of the ship and breaking into a strong stroke.
She meets you in the water, both of you wet. You look at her, knee deep in the waves, and you realise you don’t know what to do from here. She’s fidgeting, finger twirling a strand of her hair incessantly. Her breath is sharp, chest rising and falling quickly in succession. She’s the most alive thing you’ve ever seen. She’s your best friend, in the flesh. She’s beautiful.
You can feel your face heat up, and you thank every antediluvian god imaginable that you’re probably sunburnt enough that she can’t immediately tell you’re predisposed to blushing like mad; you breathe heavily and bring a hand up to your neck, a nervous tic, and before you can even complete the action you have an arm full of Lalonde crashing into you and pushing you both into the water. You gasp at the unfamiliar sensation and grab tightly onto her when she seems to be making no move to pull out of the water herself. She squeezes your waist tightly. Tears burn against your eyes as your limbs tangle together; you make an effort to blink them away until you feel her sob against you. You let yourself cry into her neck, secure in the knowledge that your tears will blend with the ocean.
You pull away slightly eventually, turning your head to look back at your painstakingly crafted boat. Roxy turns with you, eyes wide.
You clear your throat. “I should probably… get that,” you say. Roxy snorts even though it’s not that funny, staring as you talk. You hope you’re imagining her eyes on your lips.
She nods and shoves you forward.
The first order of business is securing your makeshift boat to your makeshift port. Roxy watches, shaking with excitement, as you uncaptchalogue a length of rope and tie the boat to the nearest tree that looks sturdy enough to hold it. You use the time it takes you to do this to recover from the unexpected contact. Why it was unexpected, you don’t know. You should have thought that of course the first thing Roxy would do would be tackle you to the ground, honestly.
Once you’re satisfied, you turn back to face her. She skips as she walks to you; you want to laugh at her, but then she might ask you if you’ve ever tried, and the answer is no; you’ve never skipped in your life. Never had the room, even if you’d had the inclination to try.
You watch her move and wonder if you’ve ever looked that fluid. When you watch yourself in the mirror, your actions are jerky. Mechanical. You thought that was just how people moved, but maybe it’s just you. You wish you had a larger sample size; you’d argue that Jane and Jake move like you, but seeing how different Roxy looks in person you think that maybe webcams just make people look like that.
She stops right in front of you, close enough that you could knock your foreheads together. You think about it until the thought is stuck in your mind, so you lean forward and lightly tap your head against hers. Her face splits into a grin, wide and at home on her face.
“Hi,” she breathes, voice high and unpracticed. You can feel her breath on your face; you want her to talk more. You’re realising the extent to which video calling was so completely insufficient at truly capturing her – at capturing any human, probably. There was no way for it to sufficiently show the way her throat bobs as she speaks, or the way her eyes dart around, or the true tone of her voice.
You swallow around the lump suddenly in your throat as you realise you’re supposed to reply. You hope your voice doesn’t crack. That would be embarrassing. It also hasn’t happened since you were twelve, but to be fair you don’t really talk much so far all you know it could still be happening and you wouldn’t know until it happened in front of Roxy -
“Hi,” you say, quiet and flat. No issue. You try to think of a question to ask her, something to get her to keep talking to you. “How’s it going?” you land on.
Roxy huffs a laugh. Her smile is so wide. “It’s going, um. It’s going really good!” She’s grinning up at you. She’s also holding onto your arm; you can feel her touch in your bones. “Sup with you?” she says after a pause, and you feel more comfortable knowing that she’s forgetting how normal human interaction is supposed to work too.
You snort. “Hm,” you pretend to think, “Nothing much, I suppose. Business as usual over here.”
She laughs, sudden and loud. You guys watch each other; your eyes rake up and down her body and you feel as hers do the same to you. You see her indecision before she looks into the eyes hidden behind your shades and grabs onto you again.
You grab her back automatically, skin crawling everywhere your skin touches. It’s uncomfortable in a strange way – like finally getting something you’ve craved your whole life. You suppose that’s exactly what this is. You don’t let go. Your jaw is clenched tight where it rests on top of her head.
“I can’t believe it worked,” she says eventually. “I hoped it would so bad, but I was so scared it wouldn’t.” You feel her face move against your chest as she speaks. It’s like nothing else you’ve ever felt.
Your brain takes a second to register her words. When it does, you snort. “You didn’t think I could make it?”
She squeezes you tighter. “Can you not joke about that?”
“Okay. Sorry.”
You’ve already fucked up. You comfort yourself by remembering all the times you’ve fucked up in this exact way even over text, when you have the time to carefully consider each word; her expectations for your conversational ability can’t be too high.
“You know what we should do?” she asks, voice ringing in your ears. You wait for her to continue, and instead of speaking she removes one arm from around your chest and fishes for her phone. You raise an eyebrow.
She lifts it above your heads, and you laugh. The photo she takes is captured in that exact moment you realise what she’s doing, and she sends it to a memo that contains all three of your friends. Their reactions make your face flush, which makes Roxy laugh at you as she grabs your cheeks in her hands. She takes a picture of that, too, and you shudder at how hard you’re going to have to defend your cool façade.
“Was the trip over here okay?” she asks, bringing her hand down to intertwine with your fingers. Your clothes are still wet but your hands have dried, thankfully. You have enough presence of mind to worry about whether they’re clammy – something you’ve never given a single iota of thought to before.
You shrug. “It was what I expected, mostly,” you say. You think this is the most you’ve ever spoken at once; even when you and your friends engaged in video calls, you mostly typed in a memo. She looks like she’s waiting for more, and you think of what she might want to hear. You nudge her side. “It was worth it.”
Predictably, she ducks her head with a smile.
“Yeah,” she says. “I was really scared, you know. Every time you didn’t answer I thought something had happened, and I wouldn’t have even known. Like,” she takes a deep breath, “what if you’d died and fallen into the water? Then Hal would have gone with you, and he wouldn’t even be able to tell me like he would if something had happened at your apartment. I’d just never know.”
Her voice starts and stops, rising and lowering in pitch and volume seemingly at random. Her words run into each other when they’re spoken in succession. You’re kind of obsessed, even if the topic she’s nervously rambling about is your possible death.
You think. “Nothing happened, though.”
She nods, a jerk of her head up and down. Her thumb is rubbing against the back of your hand. She’s so much better at this than you, somehow.
“Are you tired?” she asks suddenly, and without warning you feel the ache in your bones that you had been ignoring for days. You nod, mouth tilting downwards. She pulls you forward by the arm through crowded streets, in the direction of her house. The house you guys share, now? You’re not sure.
You savour the feeling of walking on new terrain; the ground is uneven, and you have to look down at your feet so as not to trip over. Roxy has no such hesitation; you curse your completely flat apartment building. Finally you stop and she waves her arms at a large set of doors, even the one that’s still attached to your hand.
“Welcome to Casa de Lalonde,” she announces. “I can give you the tour later. My room’s this way,” she says as she opens the doors and marches through.
You think you’re comforted at the idea that Roxy’s assuming you’ll sleep in her room. You guys hadn’t talked about it, but you think falling asleep next to someone – feeling the warmth of another body – is something you want to experience. You let yourself be pulled wherever she wants to take you. You think you’d follow her anywhere, right now.
Anywhere turns out to be a large bedroom, bed pushed into the corner. You look with wide eyes around at the room you’ve only seen through a computer screen; cat plushes are piled together. A real, live, three-eyed cat sits curled up on Roxy’s blanket. She drags you towards her bed and sits next to Mutie.
“Mutie, meet Dirk. You know him,” she says, grabbing her paw and waving it at you. “Dirk, say hi to Vodka Mutini.”
“Hi, Vodka Mutini,” you dutifully reply.
Satisfied, Roxy leaves the cat alone and lies back. You watch her do so and remain standing until she raises an eyebrow and pats the space next to her.
You tighten your jaw. You think if you need to pick a side you’d prefer to be next to the wall, but that would require climbing over her or getting on from the bottom and crawling to the top. You decide on the latter, squeezing yourself against the wall so that your arms aren’t brushing.
She rolls her eyes and then turns so that half her body is on top of yours.
You breathe in sharply before you carefully place an arm around her in return. She’s soft, like the puppets you’ve so often curled up against in sleep; unlike them, she is also firm and warm, and most importantly she is still moving slightly as she adjusts and breathes.
You clear your throat to talk but she puts a hand over your mouth. “Later,” she says. You nod and do your best to relax your body. She watches as you do, before she moves her hand again to come near your face.
This time, she stops in front of your eyes, one of her own eyebrows raised. Your lips press together before you grunt in assent, and slowly, she reaches to take off your shades.
You don’t think she’s ever seen you without them. You’ve definitely never sent her a photo of yourself barefaced, and you think whenever the two of you fell asleep on call your camera was angled to barely show the top of your hair. You train your eyes forward as she takes them in. You don’t know what you look like right now; there are probably bruises around your eyes from exhaustion.
She folds your glasses and puts them down on the floor next to her bed. The two of you arrange yourselves together once more, and you find that when you close your eyes you are more able to relax.
You could get used to this.
❖ ❖ ❖
You wake up to Roxy’s arms still around you, though you’ve flipped around to be staring at the wall. She’s snoring, just a quiet open-mouthed inhale and exhale, but the noise burrows itself into your brain. You focus on it, trying to acclimatise to the sound.
You turn onto your back to face the ceiling. You want to reach over her and grab your shades, but that would probably wake her. You watch her face, but you have no idea what someone looks like as they’re waking from sleep.
You wait in silence. Roxy fidgets in her sleep, and you marvel at the novelty of something so alive anywhere near you. You wonder if you do the same thing, or if you’re as robotic in sleep as you are while awake. You wouldn’t be surprised.
Roxy stirs more forcefully than the other times eventually, and you watch as she takes in a deep breath and slowly blinks open her eyes. She squints at the light coming from her window, opening her mouth in a large yawn. She clears her throat and pats against your chest.
Then she sits up abruptly, staring at you as if she’s surprised you’re still in front of her.
“Mornin’,” you grunt out. You’re not really used to talking at all, especially not this early. Your voice sounds different than what you’re used to.
“Morning,” Roxy replies, quiet and still soft with sleep. She rubs at her eyes and sits up fully, still watching you. “You know I kinda can’t believe this is actually real?” she says, voice raising like she’s asking you a question.
You do know. You feel the same way.
“Same,” you say to her, and you’re getting déjà vu with the way this is almost word for word recreating one of the first conversations you two had, when you were young and completely alone.
You’re hit with a rush of affection for her as you think about it, this girl in front of you who you’ve shared your entire life with. The only person who could ever understand you and your lived experiences. You hope it doesn’t show on your face too obviously without your shades; now that she’s awake you lean over the side of the bed to grab them and put them securely on your face. She doesn’t say anything about it, just quirks her lips as if you’re being endearing.
For all you two had discussed this – living together, not being alone, interacting in person – you don’t think you ever had any idea of what you’d actually do. Neither of you seems especially keen to talk, though maybe that’s just due to how recently you both woke up.
“Are you hungry?” she asks. You really are, and it must show as you nod because she jumps up quickly to bring you to her kitchen. You follow, staring wide-eyed at the rest of her house as you do.
You think your whole apartment could fit in her foyer. You try really hard to not feel jealous.
You enter her kitchen and she starts pulling dry goods from the cabinets. Either she’d rationed better or her mom had figured something like this might happen and provided extra supplies, because you’re seeing things – pasta, canned fruit, rice – that you had run out of years ago. You wonder if she suspected that she could be wrong about your universe-granted purpose, and then you stop wondering because if so then either she just didn’t tell your Bro, or she did and he didn’t listen; either way leaves you feeling resentful and ugly.
Roxy reaches for the pasta and sets to boiling water. You’re happy with that, though you think anything would be welcome after the several years of straight fish. While she waits for that, she stops to stand in front of the fridge.
You lean over her shoulder as she opens it, curious to see whether she’s been working with anything else especially different from you. You know her appearifier gives her access to some fresh fruit and vegetables on occasion – you make a note to ask if she can appearify you an orange, you think you’d really like that shit – but you can’t imagine she has much more variety than you did, when it comes down to it. In the past few years you’d gone from sparingly incorporating the canned beans or vegetables your Bro had provided you with into meals to pretty much exclusively eating fish you’d caught yourself; he really had to have believed that your situation would change earlier than it did, and for completely different reasons, as everything he’d left had started running out at about the time you turned sixteen.
It seems Roxy is in the same situation, more or less. Her fridge consists of an opened jar of olives, some fish that she must have caught herself, some green vegetables you think you might have caught a glimpse of outside, and a series of bottles.
She grabs for the olives and one of the bottles on the door. Then she takes reaches for the freezer and retrieves a bottle of clear alcohol and a tray of ice. You raise one arched eyebrow, hoping your judgement is clear.
She raises her hands in a mockery of surrender. “We’re celebrating!” she says. “Want a martini?”
You eye her carefully. You’ve never actually had alcohol – your Bro hadn’t seen fit to leave you any, probably because unlike Roxy’s mom in the Lalonde house he’d never actually lived in your apartment – but you’ve seen how Roxy acts when she drinks, and you don’t think you want any part of that. Not to mention how obviously addictive it is, and you have far too many control issues for that. You shake your head.
She shrugs with a laugh and sets to making her own drink. You decaptchalogue a bottle of orange soda from your sylladex and set that in front of you instead. She chats as she mixes, talking about everything and nothing. You don’t think she particularly expects a response, so you don’t provide any.
By the time the pasta has finished boiling, she’s downed two martinis. You raise your eyebrow as she goes for a third, and she raises her hands in surrender and seems to decide against it. Too excited by your new presence to risk annoying you too much, probably. She scoops the plain spaghetti into bowls and sets one in front of you. You accept it gladly. Instead of sitting, though, she suggests a movie as you two eat; you readily agree and follow her back to her bedroom.
She has DVDs her mother left her, and she flicks through them as you make yourself comfortable on her bed. She must be feeling especially nostalgic, because she’s ignoring all the movie you would go for yourself, grabbing instead ancient children’s movies. You complain only just enough to say you were against this; you figure you’ll give it a few days, at least, of being a guest in someone else’s house before you start causing actual problems.
She settles on a pile and brings them over next to you. She holds a series of princess movies in front of your face, and you shrug when she asks for an opinion. You point at one where a girl is wearing a dress that’s a similar enough shade to that of your signature orange, and she beams.
You sit in front of Roxy’s laptop as you watch, reaching down to take bites of your food whenever you remember. You imagine that this was how you two grew up, sitting cross legged next to each other, shoulders touching.
You’re not sure if you’ve ever seen any of these old movies; they might have played when you were especially young, to teach you the meaning of friendship or something. You don’t remember. You’d think that 2d animated movies about the magic of friendship would be right up you alley, really, but something about these never grabbed your attention the way other things did.
You still don’t find anything particularly interesting about them, but you find enough entertainment in analysing them for how they must have influenced Roxy’s perspective on ancient human dynamics. They must have made an impact on her, if they’re the first things she’s deciding to watch with you. You wonder if it’s the sudden, drastic change that has her reaching for childhood comforts and nostalgia. You don’t blame her; you think if you’d been the one to pick the movie, you would have gone straight for SBAHJ: The Movive, the first of your brother’s films you ever watched. You watch Roxy’s face each time a stock Prince Charming is introduced – her face softens as she watches the love stories unfold, a small smile on her face.
You think they’re quite pedestrian and outdated, but you don’t tell her that. You let her enjoy them. Maybe if she tries to get you to watch them again, you can start that debate; for now you just appreciate that you two can recreate the childhoods you never really had.
You bite your lip as you follow that line of thought. You’ve been thinking a lot recently, about all the things you had seen as a child in old media that you had never been able to participate in. If you were slightly less committed to being cool, you might ask Roxy if she wants to play tag, or hopscotch, or hide and seek. You wonder if they’d still be fun as adults. You wonder if you, antisocial and robotic, would have even found any joy in them if you had played them as a child.
Maybe Roxy will bring it up. Maybe she’s been wanting to do all these things just as much as you have. Despite your token protests when she had first started playing the movies she chose, you have no complaint about the idea of reliving your childhood, playing at seeing what it would have been like if you’d had someone else there with you.
❖ ❖ ❖
Your days pass in ways that aren’t that dissimilar to how they did when you were alone – you still have your routines. Sometimes they are separate. Sometimes you fish, or she fishes, or you both fish. Sometimes you work with your robots, and she codes programs you have to think about to understand. Sometimes you eat dinner together, and sometimes you don’t.
The difference is that now, whenever you want, you can reach out and touch her. You didn’t realise how starved for it you were until it was readily available, and you take every opportunity to brush against her. When she realises what you’re doing, she always reciprocates; you will walk close enough to her to brush your hands together in a way that could be misconstrued as an accident, and she’ll make the choice to grab your hand and squeeze it.
Some part of you never thought you would have this, you think. You’ve spent a lot of your life analysing and obsessing over your own behaviour, and you think the lack of touch and human interaction at a young age really did ruin something fundamental in you.
You don’t focus on it too much anymore, and a part of you hopes – even though you know it’s futile – that overloading your brain with touch can change whatever about it is malformed by the isolation you endured. You marvel at Roxy sometimes, still, because though you know she must have the same issues she wears it so much better. She doesn’t flinch away from touch sometimes like you do, or freeze up, or need to retreat to silence.
You’re happier than you’ve ever been. There are trade-offs – you’re not speaking to Jake or Jane as much as you used to, and sometimes you do miss your lonely apartment high over the ocean. But you can sit with Roxy on her couch and lean into her side as the two of you watch movies, or read separate books, or scroll on your phones. That’s worth more than anything else. You think if you were struck down tomorrow, the time you’ve had recently with Roxy would have left you with no regrets.
❖ ❖ ❖
But then there’s the drinking.
You knew it was a problem, back when you only talked online. You’re not sure what exactly her mom was thinking when she left it. Maybe she wasn’t. The fact remains that Roxy found it, and it’s a problem.
You’re sitting on the in her main living room, working on blueprints for an upgraded Brobot, when she walks in with a bottle of wine in her hands.
She crawls next to you, wrapping her arms around your chest. You sit stiffly as she adjusts before bringing an arm up to rest on her hair. She sighs, and you can smell the alcohol on her breath. No matter how many bottles you try to pour down the drain, she always manages to find something.
You hope your distaste for the habit doesn’t show too obviously on your face. You have to be subtle about how you approach this, when you try to approach it.
“I hate that you drink so much,” comes out of your mouth, and you grimace. Very subtle. You hate the part of you that hopes that she won’t remember this in the morning.
Roxy chuckles slowly. “Don’t care,” she says, drawing out her words. “Love you.” She blows a kiss in your direction and you squirm. Her face drops when she notices.
“Don’ love me, though. Not in the fun way,” she says into your chest. Her arms tighten around you.
“I do love you. You’re my best friend,” you say, but Roxy’s past the point of listening.
“You know what I mean,” she says, low and defeated.
You swallow. “I don’t think you do either, though. Not really,” you start. You already regret it as she turns to you with a questioning look. “I mean, I’m kinda your only option.”
She slumps. “And? Doesn’t mean I can’t like you for realsies.”
You shake your head slowly. “It doesn’t, but I don’t think you do. We wouldn’t be good together. I’d be bad for you.”
“That’s your problem, Di Stri. You’re so harsh on yourself for no reason.”
“It’s not for no reason. I’m not a particularly good person, really.”
“I think you are,” she says softly, and you think she really means it. You can feel your cheeks burning, though whether with frustration or embarrassment you’re not sure.
You move your hand in her hair, stroking it like you’ve seen her do to her cats. “Sorry. I really wish I could… give you what you want, Rox. But you deserve better than someone who doesn’t actually love you back.”
She snorts. “Deserve,” she repeats. “Doesn’t matter if I deserve better or not if there’s only one other person on earth.”
You chew on the inside of your cheek.
“What if it was all totally platonic, then?” she says slowly, and you raise an eyebrow. She pokes a finger at it, right above your shades, and you contort the skin under her finger to make her laugh. It works.
“What do you mean,” you ask, already ready to make fun of the idea.
“You know,” she starts, elongating her vowels. “I’m pretty sure platonic sex between moirails was a thing. We could try it.”
You bite your lip, suddenly unsure. “Are we moirails, now? I don’t think I agreed to that.”
She shrugs. “We could be.”
“I don’t think that’s how it works. I also don’t think those guys were having platonic sex at all, seeing as the Batterwitch outlawed all human sex altogether.”
She huffs a laugh. “All the more reason to try! Another form of rebellion.”
You can’t help it; you laugh. The look on her face is triumphant.
“We don’t have to,” she says, “Obviously you’re like, completely gay. But if you don’t want us to both be virgins forever then we’re kinda fresh out of other options.” She laughs as she speaks, even though she has a point.
You look into her eyes. “Virginity is a social construct that predates us by centuries,” you say, mostly to be difficult.
“Spoken like a loser virgin. Come on, you’ve seen Clueless. That’s a totally harsh insult.”
You roll your eyes. You have seen Clueless, in a marathon of movies she was shocked to find you’d never seen. You sigh into her hair.
“I’ll think about it,” you say, and she grins. “Maybe one day.”
❖ ❖ ❖
One day comes a few months later, on one of the rare nights Roxy convinces you to indulge in some of her alcohol. You don’t like to make a habit of it, or encourage Roxy, but you figure every once in a while it can’t hurt; even if the day after is always full of regrets and embarrassment as you mourn your cool guy façade. Roxy’s the only person who sees you like this, and she’s seen worse than you drunk and rambling with no filter anyway.
Roxy’s been drinking her signature martinis, and you’ve indulged in some fruity cocktails she’d mixed with the remnants of about six different half empty bottles that had been left in her fridge. You two have reached the point of giggly no return when she leans hard against your side, peering up at you through her hair.
“Hey,” she starts slowly, which raises alarm bells in the part of your brain still making capable of rational decision making. “You remember a while ago, when you said you’d think about us having sex?”
You do remember, and you did think about it. You don’t say this to her, waiting for her to continue.
“What’d you come up with?” she picks up from where she had trailed off, clearly not fully confident in her proposal. You’re a little surprised she’s so nervous, really; this is far from the first time she’s propositioned you, even before you two had met in person.
You take in a deep breath, hard in thought. You look at her, up and down. You’re still not attracted to her – really don’t think you’re capable of it, even – but she’s right in that she’s your only option, and you’re hers. You don’t want to deprive her of this experience if you can provide it for her, not really. You’d do anything for her, you think.
You also think don’t particularly want to deprive yourself of it, either.
She watches you as you deliberate, hand around your arm.
“Completely platonic,” you ask to confirm, and she nods quickly. You wet your lips idly, and her eyes train onto them until she seems to make a conscious effort to move them away. This seals the deal for you. You think now, with the drinks she’d mixed still bolstering your courage, is probably the only time you’d be able to give it a fair shot.
You steel yourself, and then you raise a hand to her face and brush her hair from in front of her eyes. “Okay,” you say, and her mouth drops open just slightly.
“Really?” she breathes, and you nod. “Okay.”
You know you’re supposed to make the first move. You work yourself up to lean forward. Her eyes are wide as your lips press against hers, until she breathes in and seems to remember to close them. Yours stay open behind your shades.
Her lips are wet with the lipgloss she insists on wearing even though it’s just the two of you. You don’t think you particularly like how it feels against your mouth, but you move your lips to deepen the kiss anyway. Your hand is still resting against her face, and you use it to tilt her head to the side as you open your mouth wider. Her tongue darts past your lips, and you work to not obviously cringe when you feel it against your own.
She tastes like the martinis she’s been drinking. Your wonder if you taste like oranges. That would be thematically appropriate enough for both of you, probably.
Her hands are on your biceps now, squeezing and caressing. You place the arm not cupping her cheek onto her shoulder, rubbing your thumb down into her collarbone.
You make the jump in your own brain and begin to slide your hand lower, stopping when it cups her breast over her shirt. She gasps into your mouth as you start to squeeze the soft skin.
Despite the lack of any real attraction or desire on your part, you think this isn’t so bad so far. Kissing seems overrated, but maybe that would be different if the lips on yours were attached to someone stronger, larger. You don’t think you mind her body, soft and warm against yours; it feels the same way as it does when she lies next to you at night, a comforting presence that’s still novel to you sometimes.
She breaks away from you and swallows nervously. She places her hands under your tank top, lifting them up while touching your bare skin. You take the hint and rid yourself of the top, leaving your chest bare. She watches, placing her hand on your side once you stop moving. You watch as she makes no move to undress herself and surmise that she must want you to do that to; you reach forward and do the same in reverse, sliding your hands under her top and lifting it over her head.
She bites her lip when she looks at you after, reaching behind herself and undoing her own bra. She lets it fall to the floor beside you; you’re still awkwardly sitting next to each other on the couch. She stands to unbutton her jeans, letting those fall to the floor as well. You shrug off your own jeans while remaining seated, watching her as you do.
You’ve seen each other naked before. You don’t consider yourself particularly modest, having raised yourself in complete isolation, and you think Roxy’s the same; it’s hard to think of your body as something that should be kept private when there’s no one to keep it private from. It feels different, still, stripping in front of each other for the express purpose of having sex.
She’s curled in on herself, more self-conscious than usual. You furrow your brows, and you hope she can’t tell behind your shades.
You pull her towards you and hold onto her hips, still covered by her underwear. “You’re beautiful,” you tell her, and despite not meaning in in the way she wants, you find you do still mean it. Her face lightens, and she sits next to you again, twisting so that she can push you down to lay flat on the couch.
She moves to sit on top of your hips, face determined. She leans back down, recapturing your lips with hers. You return to kneading at her breasts, both hands full.
You’re still not hard, which could definitely prove to make things difficult. You close your eyes, imagine Roxy’s slender hands on your chest as being firmer and thicker, imagine the brush of stubble against your cheek when your faces press together. You imagine an earthier, muskier scent than that of the sweet perfume she favours. You imagine a specific face, glasses hitting against each other.
You feel guilty, but Roxy knows you’re not interested in her like that anyway.
You both gasp as she brushes against your clothed erection. Hesitantly, you pull her closer against you, and she starts to grind down – first slowly, then faster. You hold your breath, keeping your hands travelling across her body until you slip your fingers past the waistband of her underwear.
She’s wet, which you had read enough when considering this to expect, but it still almost surprises you. You feel your way around before you start circling your fingers around what you hope is the right spot. She gasps as you start to increase the pressure before dipping a finger into her.
She’s warm, like nothing else you’ve ever felt. You pump your finger inside of her before withdrawing and returning to rubbing against her clit. Your movements are jittery and unpractised, and you feel more self-conscious about this than anything else you’ve done since you met her.
She sighs into your neck and reaches down to remove her underwear. You stop moving your hand as she pulls your own boxers off, and your freed dick feels cool air for a second before she’s pressing herself against you again.
You gulp, and if you’re going to do this you’re going to do it right, so you flip yourselves over so you’re on top of her. Her bright eyes stare up at you. Her hands are on your chest.
You reach down to press another finger against her, before lining yourself up with her.
You have to push yourself in slowly, keeping watch on her face as she grimaces. She waves you ahead when you pause. You stop when you’re fully inside of her, pausing both to catch your own breath and to let her relax around you.
Her face is flushed, twisted in what you’re fairly sure looks like pain, but she tells you to continue so you do. Once you start thrusting it’s over embarrassingly quickly, a few short minutes of exertion before you’re pulling out to spill over her stomach.
Roxy’s all giggles after a few long moments of silence, and you can’t help but join in as she drapes herself across you.
“Okay, we can say we’ve done it,” she says.
Your hands are still on each other. If nothing else, the closeness was novel. You don’t think you would do it again, though. You hum in agreement.
“Worth the months of busting my balls about it, then?” you ask, doing your best to inject humour into your voice. It is a joke, you’re just not sure if that would come across without extra effort on your part right now. Luckily, she laughs.
“Obviously.” She chuckles to herself again. “But yeah, I don’t think we were really doing it right. That kinda wasn’t good at all,” she says, and you’d be offended if you didn’t agree so heavily. She rests her arm on your chest, then rests her head on top of it, staring at you curiously.
You raise an eyebrow at her in question, and she raises an eyebrow in return, before shrugging. “Just wondering,” she says. “Who were you thinking about, then?”
You grimace, and she laughs. “Rox,” you complain.
“S’okay. I’m not offended. Can I guess?”
“Yeah, sure, I wonder who from our extremely limited pool of candidates it could be,” you say. You cover your eyes with your arm for the lack of your shades, and she snorts as she pulls it away to look at you again.
“Could be Caliborn,” she suggests jokingly, and you pretend to gag. “Have you talked to him recently?” she asks, voice softening.
“Who, Caliborn?” you ask, trying to give yourself some time to think.
She rolls her eyes. “You know who I mean.”
You let out a deep sigh and shake your head. “Not really,” you say. “I mean, I try. But I think he’s been feeling a bit left out with all of this, you know? It used to be the three of us were all pretty fucking isolated and miserable about it. Jane too, I guess, but she had her dad at least. And now we’re together, and he’s still on his own. I don’t know,” you pause, droning voice silent for a moment. “When he first texted me about this,” you gesture between the two of you, “he seemed kinda worried that we’d just… forget about him, I guess. Maybe he thought it’d be easier if he just stopped talking to us first?”
A thought comes to your mind, and you grimace. “Have you spoken to Jane?” you ask, fearing you know the answer.
Sure enough, Roxy frowns. “No.” You hold her tighter. “Uh, I might have tried to get her to believe us. Again. And she wasn’t happy.”
Your face is still. UU has been gone since you were sixteen. Now Jane and Jake, your two best friends other than Roxy, aren’t talking to you. You look down at Roxy, the only other person on earth and the only person you talk to. You wet your lips, bite on the side of your cheek. “You ever think about how we’ve kind of isolated ourselves even more since we met up?” you ask, voice flat.
She doesn’t answer immediately, curling closer towards you. “What else were we supposed to do, just wait around forever?” she says, voice quiet. You shrug. You’re not sure what you were supposed to do, just that this hardly seems like the most optimal resolution.
Roxy bites at her lip. “I think we should talk about something else,” she finally says. “Hey, imagine if I got pregnant.”
You cringe. Somehow this is so much worse, in every way. She snorts at your face, poking at your cheek. You shake your head, hoping your expression portrays how deeply you hate that idea. You knew it would come up eventually; Roxy’s mentioned it to you even before you two met in person, on lonely, drunken nights. You’re not sure where this idea comes from, but you know it’s something she thinks about fairly often. You’re surprised it took this long for her to bring it up, if you’re being honest.
“How about a different subject change,” you say, hoping you can shut the conversation down. You’re struggling to think of something to talk about, though. Roxy takes pity on you, hand coming up to stroke at your hair.
“How about we just don’t talk for a bit,” she says, and you nod quickly. She laughs.
You’re still a bit tipsy, you think. Most of the effects have worn off, but you’re still feeling it enough that you can close your eyes and your thoughts don’t race, which is unusual for you. You savour it, the rare times you accept Roxy’s offer of a drink.
You fall asleep like that, legs still tangled up with Roxy’s.
❖ ❖ ❖
You wake up still naked and still clinging to each other. You cringe at her hair in your mouth, and you feel sweaty and gross, but overall you find you regret it less than you thought you might. Roxy wakes up soon after you, and you don’t talk about it.
You excuse yourself to shower, and she sets to making breakfast. She drank more than you – as usual – and it shows in her slow movements as she stands up and stretches. You watch as she stumbles, and she smiles at you when you catch her before she can actually fall.
The two of you part ways, and you make a straight line for one of her showers. You turn the water up as hot as your body can take and stand underneath as it hits your back. You let your brain wander as the water engulfs you. You’re still surprised, months after arriving here, by how much better the water pressure is than it was in your apartment. You’d never had any complaints, but maybe you should have, if you’d known this is something you could have had the whole time.
You scrub yourself down. You savour it, cleaning the dirt and grime off of yourself. You work at your skin more than you would usually, remembering how sticky you felt as you stood up. You rinse all the soap off your body slowly, before standing in front of the large, ornate mirror to dry your hair.
This is something you were overly obsessed with even when it was only you who would see your meticulously spiked hair, and despite Roxy’s insistence that she doesn’t care, you keep to your extended hair routine here too. You stare into your own unshaded eyes as you do so, trying to understand what Roxy sees in you.
When you finally finish, she’s waiting for you outside of the door. Roxy stands with her hands clasped behind her back, watching as you change into your clothes before she claps in excitement.
“I was thinking,” she says, voice clear and strong, “While we’re doing things we’ve missed out on otherwise…”
You raise your eyebrows when she trails off.
“Have you ever seen those kids games like tag and hopscotch and stuff?” she asks, a small smile on her face. You nod, lips quirking up. “I don’t know if they’d be any fun with just two people, but…”
You pretend to think about it, before flashstepping towards her and tapping her shoulder. “Tag,” you say, and flashstep away once more.
She chases after you. “Flashstepping’s not allowed!” she yells after you with a laugh, running in your direction.
You laugh. “Should’ve said that earlier,” you reply as you race down the hallways of Roxy’s house. You marvel as you pass rooms you don’t think you’ve even entered yet, despite how long you’ve been here.
You tag each other back and forth until you grow tired of it, instead just running in circles through the rooms of the house. Eventually you wander into one of the living rooms, and you collapse onto the couch abruptly. Roxy joins you, jumping on your back.
You let her settle on top of your back and carefully do not think about last night. She rests her cheek on you, close enough that you can feel her breath moving the fabric of your shirt. You’re a little scared that despite the lack of communication following your totally platonic sex, she’s taken it a different way. You can’t help but feel like you’re leading her on in some way, even though she knows you’re not interested.
You suppose she’s right in that leading each other on is somewhat meaningless, when there’s no one else to get with. If she still chooses to believe that you two have to get together by virtue of being the last people left on earth, then that’s on her.
❖ ❖ ❖
You think the two of you are quite affectionate already – a byproduct of spending the whole rest of your lives alone – but she ramps up the physical touch in the weeks following your rendezvous. It’s different, now; she might reach to hold onto your bicep instead of your hand, or rest her hand on your chest when you’re lying on each other, and sometimes you redirect her but sometimes you don’t. You can’t explain why, not even to yourself; the only thing that makes sense is that you like the attention on yourself, the idea of having someone so taken with you.
You continue to try and contact Jake, reaching out in the moments that you’re alone despite the short, rare answering messages that seem to imply that he doesn’t particularly want you to. You think there might have been a chance you could have salvaged that relationship, had you been more subtle; of course, at the first sign of being abandoned, you had instead obsessively grabbed on and made things worse. If he had just wanted space at the beginning – which is likely, knowing his tendency to prefer to puzzle over issues on his own – you fucked that up by being annoying and overbearing.
Similarly, you think you might have overexplained yourself to Jane; she was good at picking out lies, and most of what you had to offer her was lies. She’s growing old enough to truly start taking on Crockercorp responsibilities, and despite your horror at the idea she was taking to it quite well. Messages between her and yourselves are fraught with tense awkwardness, on the rare occasions they are exchanged.
You start to wonder at the idea of just giving up and trying to give Roxy what she wants. Well and truly, you are the only people in each other’s lives. Nothing will change.
It’s hard, when what she wants, still, is something you recoil at the thought of. If it was just physicality, or playing at romance, you think you could pretend for long enough. What she wants instead of that, though, is motherhood. She brings it up every so often – ostensibly as a joke, but you can see through that. You dismiss the idea quickly when it comes up, hoping that she’ll eventually stop trying.
❖ ❖ ❖
She doesn’t stop trying, though.
“Don’t you think we owe it to humanity? Even a little bit?”
She’s tipsy but not drunk, aware enough to have a conversation that you’re mostly sure she’ll remember in the morning but not self-conscious enough to censor her words. She doesn’t have to elaborate for you to know what she’s arguing for.
“Humanity is dead, Rox. It was dead well before us. Nobody owes them shit, especially not us.”
The idea of children terrifies you. For every reason imaginable, you think that’s the worst idea anyone has ever had in the history of the universe. Not even to mention the fact that you’re pretty sure having a child around would drive you insane and you would resent it forever.
“Okay, fuck humanity then. What if I want to anyway? What if I’d like little baby me’s running around?”
You sigh heavily. You think of the princess movies Roxy’s mom left her. You think of the 21st century media you both favour. “Do you actually want that?” you ask.
“What?”
“Do you actually want a baby?”
Her brow is still furrowed as she stares into your eyes. “What do you mean?” she repeats, like a broken record.
You sigh and rub the back of your neck. Your psychoanalytical background consists of mainly some dives into disgraced Freudian theory when you’re feeling especially bored, but you feel confident in your assessment of her anyway. “You seem to have an obsessively idealised view of the nuclear family. You shove yourself into a weak, shitty hole because you think you should. Do you want a baby because you want a baby or because you think it’ll make you more,” you think for a way to end your sentence that isn’t cruel but still illustrates your thoughts, but before you can she grips your arm.
“I’m not obsessed with the nuclear family.” She says. She spits out the word ‘obsessed’ mockingly, and you bristle.
“Yes, you are.”
“How can I be obsessed with something I’ve never experienced,” she argues, and you bark a laugh.
“Easily.”
“And you’re not?”
“I don’t think I am. No,” you snort. Your voice is thick with derision at the implication.
“Oh, please. You’re the poster boy for toxic masculinity,” she says. “You can’t handle anyone thinking you’re anything but a cool guy with a sword. I don’t know why you fucking bother, it’s not like we talk to anyone else anymore.”
You sigh heavily through your nose. You don’t think she has a point, but she acts like she’s made one.
“What,” she says, “I just have to sit here and take it while you talk shit about me, but I can’t say anything back? You keep saying you don’t think you’re a good person, but it sure seems like you think you’re always in the right.”
You frown. “I don’t think I’m always in the right,” you protest. You think it’s the opposite, really. You think you’re often terribly wrong, about just about everything.
“You sure do think your opinion’s the only one that matters.”
“When we’re talking about children? I don’t know, Rox, I think I should have some input there. I don’t think I’m in the wrong for that.”
“Of course you don’t.”
You wrap your arms around yourself. You don’t know what’s happened to the two of you. You hate it. You wish things would go back to the way they were when you were still freshly learning each other, still excited at the newness of existing in the same space.
You shake your head to rid yourself of the nostalgia. You return to the topic at hand.
“I don’t,” you say again. “And how fucking fair would that be anyway, huh? Saying we owe it to humanity to push the ‘last humans on earth’ torch to the army of kids you wanna have isn’t an argument that works. There would be no repopulating, Roxy, unless the future of humanity is an incestuous fuckfest full of inbreeding and genetic disorders.”
Roxy sniffs and her eyes darken. “What about just one, then? Just for me. One baby. You wouldn’t even have to acknowledge it. What’s the fucking point otherwise, why are we even staying alive at all if humanity’s going to end with us dying sadly of old age.”
“I just feel like that’s what i should be doing. Like if our cosmic destiny had panned out, that would’ve been my thing. Creation. Don’t fucking roll your eyes at me.”
You think involuntarily of the tens of cats you’ve seen sacrificed to the hunger of the carapacian colony surrounding the two of you. You think despite her convictions, Roxy might not make the best mother. And you certainly would make an abysmal father. You don’t say anything, and Roxy’s eyes get progressively wetter.
“Why are we still bothering, man?” she says, voice choked. You don’t know what to do. Until recently you’d never had to comfort anyone; you find your own crying mostly pathetic and contemptible. You doubt Roxy will appreciate it if you treat her the way you would treat yourself in this situation.
You just shrug and put your arm loosely around her shoulders. You make no other move to try and help. “What else is there to fucking do?”
She bows her head deeper. You move your arm to cup her cheek softly, then reach up and start weaving your hand through her hair. It’s greasy. You don’t pull away.
She leans into you, and you watch as she rubs at her mascara-framed eyes. Black streaks smudge around her eyes. “I think,” she says after a long pause, “I need to stop drinking for real.”
You keep stroking her hair. You don’t comment, in case she changes her mind. Her gaze hardens, and she nods. “Yeah,” she says, more decisively this time.
You nod back at her. “I’ll pour that shit out,” you say, standing from your spot next to her. She thanks you weakly before lying down, resting her head where your body has left a warm spot.
You stand in the doorway, lingering between rooms. You clear your throat.
“For what it’s worth,” you say awkwardly, “I’m really not just trying to be a dick, or anything. Like, obviously I don’t want a kid at all, but that’s not it. I don’t think it’d be fair to bring a kid here. I think I’d be a really shitty parent.”
She sighs, forlorn. “Yeah,” she groans out. “I like to think I’d be a good mom. Maybe it’s just not made for me, though.”
She sounds defeated, and you’re sorry to have done that to her. You think you’re still right, though. You don’t understand what Roxy sees in the idea of children, but it’s a hopeless dream.
“Guess we’re all each other’s got forever, then,” she says, and while the words should be grim, her tone isn’t as upset as you think it could be.
That could be worse, you think. If there’s anyone you had to be stuck with – even if you had ever known more than four other people – you’re pretty sure you’d pick Roxy every time.
You just hope she continues to feel the same way.