• For hoko_onchi.

For hoko, whose “space race AU when?” comment on this one-shot launched me into an interstellar Hollanov psychosis.

Thank you to my wonderful betas—Sammi, plor, allure, hoko, and smug—for turning this space trash into (hopefully) something worthy of this incredible fandom and the source material that inspires it.

This fic is not a spinoff of anything other than HR, but if you’d like a reference point: imagine if Heated Rivalry, The Darkness Outside Us, and Project Hail Mary co-parented a horny child.

Chapter titles are borrowed from the following songs: Escape Pod by Paris Paloma; Everything Matters by Aurora; Sunlight by Hozier.

Please note: I have very little understanding of interstellar travel and the science behind it. If you have a degree in physics, this fic may make you angry! Try to suspend your disbelief. The porn will be worth, it—pinky swear.

For more explanation about the non-canonical death tag, please see endnotes.

The first chapter of this work uses a workskin. For the best reading experience, please leave on! Ty to Plugs for the code, and smug for finding it for me!

**ETA: This fic now has art! My wonderfully talented friend Aemelia has given our boys the stellar treatment. Peep them at the end of Chapter 3. Thank you, darling!!

Day 1

Day 4

Day 10

Day 11

Day 12

Day 22

Day 41

Day 44

Day 104

Day 1221

Day 1410

"Found you," Ilya says as the other vessel comes into view through the porthole.

"Marleau, run a scan."

"The craft appears to be Canadian-built, though there are no Earth records to confirm its existence. Based on materials and technologies, it was likely built between the years 2152 and 2167." The AI's voice is both sing-songy and monotone, and it soothes and grates at Ilya with equal efficacy.

"Can you tell if it's crewed?" It looks too big to not have at least one person on board, not to mention the spinning outer rings suggest it may have artificial gravity. Still, Ilya shoves his hope in a steel container in his mind and airlocks it for good measure.

"Based on the design, it appears to be a crewed ship capable of supporting up to two human life forms."

One hundred and eighty-nine days he's waited for this moment.

The ship is right there. And yet the words to initiate contact are a clot in Ilya's throat.

It's a real Schrödinger's spacefarer situation.

Right now, there exists a universe where on the other end of the comms is a person. A living, breathing human fucking being to share this crushing burden with.

But right now there also exists another universe. The source of Ilya's hesitation, which is an entirely inadequate word for what he's feeling, but no one ever taught him the word for "might die on the spot if things don't go the way I need them to."

Ilya punches out a breath at the same time he throws his hands down.

He opens his mouth to give Marleau the command but the AI cuts him off before he can make a sound.

"Incoming audio signal."

Ilya sputters out a laugh. All this to be shown up by a fucking Canadian. His father would be horrified.

"Patch them through."

"Patching through audio," Marleau confirms. From the ship's speakers comes a crackle followed by a man's voice.

"This is Shane Hollander, Canadian astronaut aboard the Thunderbird Vessel. Do you read?" His voice is measured, almost robotic, but unlike Marleau's, there's something unmistakably human about it. No amount of insulation or aluminum could ever dampen the sepulchral tone of a desperation so colossal.

Ilya's heart is thumping hard against his ribcage. He swallows, summons his English. Though he speaks many languages, he's terribly out of practice what with his only conversational partner being a Russian-speaking AI.

"I read you, Shane Hollander." He recognizes the same desperation in his own voice. If he's lucky it will be eclipsed by his accented English.

A nervous laugh echoes throughout the cockpit, and Ilya doesn't know if he's the one making it.

A human. Alive.

He thought he was the only one left. Finding each other… It was improbable to the nth degree, marginally short of a complete fucking miracle.

"Is everyone…" comes the voice overhead, but he doesn't finish his question.

Ilya understands.

"Yes, everyone is dead." He doesn't see the point of sugarcoating—nor delaying, for that matter—the truth. It wouldn't be the first time his kindness was mistaken for coldness. Probably won't be the last.

"You have video feed, yes?" Ilya asks, suddenly needing to see the man whose heart he just shattered.

A pregnant pause, then: "Yes."

"And if I send you video signal?"

"I might accept."

"I might call."

Hollander answers immediately, his face blinking into view on the display. He is unshaven, bordering on unkempt with shoulder-length hair in desperate need of a trim. Still, Ilya can tell that they are similar in age, give or take a few years.

"I am Cosmonaut Ilya Rozanov." The words taste stale on his tongue, neglected.

"You're from the EEU," Hollander says—not a question.

"Ah, yes, and you are from Canada," he replies—also not a question. "I didn't know Canada had space program."

"We don't. Not officially, at least. Or—we didn't, I guess."

Hollander scrubs his face with both hands. When they fall away, Ilya's gaze is drawn to the dark circles that sag heavy under his eyes like hammocks.

Hollander continues, "When the climate crisis got really bad, in the middle of the twenty-first century, a group of scientists and engineers started a collective. They secured mass amounts of private funding but operated on an entirely cooperative model. Their mission was to achieve interstellar travel within a hundred years, maybe find a suitable exoplanet for colonization."

Ilya realizes his mouth has turned down into a frown. Hollander sounds like he's reading from a script. Maybe he is. Or, maybe this is just how he is when he's nervous. It would be understandable. Ilya is, too, even if he'd never admit it.

"So, nothing to do with Vastator?" Ilya asks, holding back a wince as he says the asteroid's name out loud. Vastator: The Destroyer.

"Not at first. But then early sightings kind of accelerated things."

"I don't understand, early sightings were twenty-five, thirty years ago. You are, what, twenty-five at most?"

"Twenty-two, actually,"

Huh, same as me.

"I was born on the Thunderbird."

"Ёпт, Hollander," Ilya hisses, slipping back into his mother tongue. He realizes something then. "Your parents are on that ship? You are not alone?"

Ilya doesn't know why it makes a difference, but it does. Not for himself, but for the man in the screen—the man in the ship a mere stone's throw away. Relief begins to unbuckle the vise on his heart. Only…

"Ёпт," Ilya curses again as tears well in Hollander's eyes.

The man shakes his head. "They died, last year. Solar flare. They were fixing a damaged panel on the hull. It killed them instantly."

"Hollander," is all Ilya can manage. The words evade him. English words, Russian words. What could he say, anyway? To be alone by design in the universe is one thing. To be alone due to some freak accident is another thing.

"It's fine. I mean, it was going to happen eventually, right?"

"Yes, but—not like that." Ilya pauses, stares off into the middle distance for a few seconds. "My mother died when I was young. She took pills. Many. I found her. Is not the same but… Anyway, I'm sorry, Shane Hollander."

"Thanks," Hollander replies, wiping unfallen tears from his eyes.

Ilya spends the next three hours catching Hollander up on the past ten years since he and his parents last received comms from Earth.

It's a grim tale, one that he isn't happy about recounting, but he'll tell it if it means talking to another human being.

When Ilya is done, the Canadian drops his head forward, clasps his hands behind his neck.

"I'm okay, I'm just freaking out" he says, "I'll be okay in a second."

"Hollander," Ilya says. "Hollander," he repeats more softly. He wishes he could reach out through the display, put his hand on the back of Hollander's neck, squeeze the meat of it reassuringly.

"I want to tell you everything is okay, but I can't. Is a fucking mess. But at least we are not alone, yes?"

"Yeah, yeah—you're right. Okay, enough," Hollander says into his knees before peeling upright. He takes a deep breath, nods his composure back into place. His eyes seem brighter when he opens them and…are those freckles?

Ilya squints to get a better look until he remembers he's sitting in the most expensive aluminum can ever built and uses his thumb and forefinger to zoom in on the display.

Freckles. An entire galaxy of them dusting the man's cheeks, the bridge of his nose.

For someone who's never experienced the sun's rays, he has an awful lot of them.

Ilya wonders if they taste like stardust.

Day 1411

"I am surprised your ship was still here," Ilya says then takes a sip of coffee from the vacuum-sealed pouch.

It's morning the next day and he and Hollander are having breakfast together. They'll both have to perform their ships' respective systems checks shortly, but for now they get to bask in the company of another person.

"I thought about leaving. Hundreds of times, maybe thousands. I told myself, Keep going, finish the mission. I'm supposed to be in cryosleep right now, you know, headed to Tau Ceti. But then the ship's impact sensors alerted me of a passing vessel, and, I dunno, I just couldn't fucking bring myself to move from this spot."

Hollander's cheeks go pink and he looks away from the camera.

It's adorable.

Ilya raises his eyebrows, tests his luck. "You waited nearly 200 days on off-chance a passing ship detected yours? And on off-off-chance whoever was piloting would turn around?"

"Fuck off," Hollander says as a small defiant smile pulls at the corners of his lips. "You spent 200 days trying to find me. What's the difference?"

Ilya shrugs. He knows there's no difference. If anything, he was the more reckless one. Three hundred human embryos sit in stasis at exactly -196 degrees under his watch. Humankind's last shot.

Him.

Sometimes it's his mother's voice he hears, brimming with belief and pride. Other times it's his father's, said with a question mark. Him? Is that the best we can do?

Right now it's the latter. Selfish, selfish, selfish.

And Hollander, well, he's missionless, though Ilya doesn't say as much.

"I should do systems checks," Ilya says before polishing off his syrniki.

"Yeah, same," says Hollander, and the display goes black.

Ilya wipes his face with a microfibre towel before the beads of accumulated sweat float away.

Unlike the Thunderbird, the Kamchatka doesn't have any mechanism to simulate gravity. This is a ship built for travelling great distances. Not exploration. Certainly not comfort. Anything categorically non-essential to mission success was deprioritized.

Gravity did not make the cut.

So Ilya runs on a treadmill every day, strapped into a harness to both hold him in place and direct counterpressure into the interior ship wall.

"Marleau," Ilya says as an idea takes shape. "Send a video signal to the Thunderbird." A half-minute later the freckle-faced Canadian pops onto the display. Normally Ilya uses it to watch old recordings of sports matches while he runs. Or porn.

Okay, it's usually porn.

"Shane Hollander," he says on an exhale, realizing quickly they're doing the same thing.

"Rozanov," Hollander replies as he leans forward then propels himself back, his shoulders rising as he does. A rowing machine, maybe? "Everything okay?" he asks. It doesn't seem insincere.

"I am lonely," Ilya whines, "and I'm bored of porn on my ship."

Hollander's eyes grow wide. Beneath the freckles, the skin of his cheeks bloom a shade of pink that reminds Ilya of the cherry blossoms in Sochi.

"Fuck's sake, Rozanov," he hisses, turning his face from the camera.

"Oh, you do not have porn on ship?"

Hollander gapes, his whole body goes still.

Ilya raises his eyebrows in question.

"No, we—no I—don't have porn on the ship. I mean, maybe there is some, somewhere on the servers, but I haven't gone looking!"

"You are twenty-two and have not looked for porn? I don't believe."

"I mean… it's not like I had a lot of privacy until a year ago. And then I was kind of, you know, in fucking mourning!" The look on his face is one of undiluted exasperation, and Ilya knows he's hit a nerve.

He didn't plan to lead them here. But then, Ilya didn't plan much of anything. Plans were made for him. And in the apertures between, he tended to let spontaneity reign. Ilya has always been an act-now-apologize-later kind of person. Which is not to say it didn't get him in trouble. But rarely were the stakes this high.

"Hollander, I'm sorry," he says. "That was—how you say?—not sensitive?"

"Insensitive," Hollander says with a scowl, and Ilya is grateful for the correction. He'll take a scolding over silence any day.

"Ah, yes, insensitive. I will be more sensitive in future. No more talk about jerking off."

"Who said anything about jerking off?"

"I mean, was implied. Porn. Jerking off. You don't jerk off. Is fine. We move on."

"I never said that."

"Never said what, Hollander?"

"That I don't jerk off."

Ilya assesses the man whose cheeks have deepened in colour. "Okay," he says, making a mental note of the way Hollander's nostrils flared just then.

"Okay, well, if you don't need anything I've got some lab work I need to get done."

"Yes, okay, Shane Hollander. You go do your lab work. I will be here. Not watching porn."

"Whatever."

"Bye," Ilya says before the display goes black. He knows he is smiling. He knows because he hasn't felt those muscles work in a long, long time.

Day 1415

"What is on agenda today, Shane Hollander?" Ilya asks between bites of porridge. They've been having breakfast together for five days now, and Ilya looks forward to it every simulated morning, even if it did take a few days to adjust. He didn't tell Hollander, but after the first day, he had Marleau adjust the Kamchatka's clocks to match the Thunderbird's.

"Can you just…"

"Can I just, what?"

"Call me Shane. Please."

It's the please that has Ilya's cock pressing against the inner layer of his red jumpsuit.

Maybe it's because he heard it so rarely growing up. Rarely and then never. Or maybe it's because somehow he knows Hollander—Shane—wouldn't say it unless he really, really wanted it.

"Okay, Shane." He makes eye contact as he says it, and Shane—to his credit—maintains the connection, their eyes boring into each other across several hundred metres of interstellar medium.

"And what do you want me to call you?" Shane asks far more earnestly than the words merit.

A deluge of mostly Russian and entirely inappropriate terms flood Ilya's mind. He must have smiled or laughed or something because Shane interrupts his thoughts with a laugh of his own, and a very innocent, "What? Fuck off!"

"You can call me whatever you want." He winks at Shane as he says it, and Shane swallows visibly before averting his gaze. When he directs his attention back at the camera—back at Ilya—his eyes are glassy.

It's unnerving in the same way jumping into a frigid lake is. It wakes you up. Reminds you that you are human with human needs and human vulnerabilities.

"Call me Ilya," he says, then.

"Ilya," Shane repeats. His smile is understated but it envelops Ilya like a warm blanket all the same.

"Marleau," Ilya says from his sleeping quarters. It's well past the time he typically goes to sleep, but that's no surprise. Ever since he found Shane five Earth days ago, sleep has become a fickle companion.

"Yes, Cosmonaut Rozanov," the AI replies.

"Transmit audio to the Thunderbird."

"Trasmitting audio."

Seconds later, Shane's voice comes over the ship's speakers. "Is everything okay?"

"Yes, everything is okay."

"Oh. Good."

"I have idea," Ilya says before closing his eyes. Just knowing Shane is on the other end of the comms is making him feel more relaxed already.

"Go on."

"Tomorrow, we will race."

"What do you mean?"

"You will go on treadmill, I will go on treadmill. We will see who can run four kilometres the fastest."

A chuckle and then: "You're on."

"I hope you will not be too mad at me."

"When?"

Ilya shrugs, smiles a half-smile. He knows full well Shane can't see him, but he hopes he can hear it in his voice when he says, "When I humiliate you."

Shane snorts. "You fuckin' wish."

Day 1416

When Shane's face flashes onto the display, Ilya has to do a genuine double take.

The man before him is not the same man he saw yesterday.

His face is clean-shaven, his hair smoothed down and tied back into a messy bun.

Ilya had made approximations of what he must look like under the scruff, and while they weren't inaccurate, they were wildly insufficient.

The man is beautiful.

Full lips, square jaw, perfectly arched eyebrows. And those adorable fucking freckles. They have nothing to hide behind anymore, for which Ilya is suddenly grateful.

"Morning," Shane says into his coffee.

Because Ilya is physically incapable of saying any of the things he was actually thinking, he says, "So, what, you got tired of looking like shit?"

"Fuck off." Shane laughs. He's doing that more often now, and Ilya tries not to think too deeply about why it feels like dawn rising in his heart.

"Ohhhh, I understand. Is the race."

"What about it?"

"You take seriously. Mr. Competitor. Mr. Olympian."

"It's just been a while, I guess, since it mattered—what I look like."

And Ilya can relate. He's spent more time than usual in front of the mirror these past few days. His curly hair had crept down to nearly his shoulders, and he finds he likes how it looks. His face is all sharp angles—not that he's complaining. It's what made him quite popular with the women—and men, for that matter—at the Academy. But the softness suits him, too. The way the waves crest and peak around his face like the gentle ripple a duck makes in a pond. His father would have hated it. Anything longer than two fingers earned him a sneer if not a sheer.

It's childish of Ilya, he knows, to relish in the quiet rebellion. Grigori is dead. Just like his mother. Just like everyone else.

Everyone but…

"Have you always had long hair?" Shane asks, as if reading Ilya's thoughts.

"Ah, no. Short, usually."

"Well, you're pulling it off."

And just like that: Ilya is never cutting his hair again.

Ilya spends the next several hours thinking about freckle-formed constellations.

When it's time for The Race, he floats to the designated fitness area of the ship. It's small but it serves its purpose.

Shane's face and upper body come into view. He's already on the treadmill, the up and down of his shoulders indicating a steady walking pace.

"I have idea," Ilya says as he clips himself into the harness.

"Yeah, I know, we're doing it."

"No, better idea."

"Let's hear it."

"A—how you say?—wager?"

Shane nods, and Ilya continues. "If you win, I will do what you want. For entertainment. Sing a Russian song. Dance. Whatever."

"And if you win?"

"Then I get to watch you jerk off."

With the recent changes in Shane's appearance, Ilya can track the exact journey the blush takes across Shane's skin, from cheeks to temples to ears to neck. It goes right up to his mock neck collar, which is zipped to the top-most tooth, and Ilya wonders how far down it ventures.

"You won't win," Shane says with what appears to be maximum effort.

Ilya shrugs, grins wickedly. "We will see."

Shane does not win.

He curses at the same time Ilya celebrates, chalks his loss up to the ship's artificial gravity.

"I think you did on purpose." Ilya doesn't actually, but he is pretty sure it'll get a rise out of Shane.

The look on the his face is homicidal, and Ilya stifles a shudder.

"I'd rather die."

"You are cute when angry."

Shane scowls but the slight upturn of his mouth betrays him.

"I will get cleaned up now. Will collect my winnings later."

"When?"

"Ah. Surprise."

"Bye, Rozanov," Shane says, his skin dewy with sweat.

Ilya craves salt like he craves the sharp tickle of grass against his shirtless back.

Ilya holds out as long as he can, distracts himself with a sponge bath then systems checks then maintenance. He eats an unoffensive lunch of reconstituted beef stroganoff before settling into the cockpit bucket seat.

Historically speaking, Ilya doesn't get nervous around prospective lovers. Then again, none of his past lovers have been the only other living human in the known universe.

It's a big deal in the same way him making it out of orbit (and not his three comrades) was a Big Deal.

"Marleau, initiate video signal to the Thunderbird."

"Initiating video."

Ilya swears in Russian when the display lights up. He's going to combust. He's going to go full supernova.

Shane. In glasses.

There's something so wholesome about it. No one back home had glasses. Not with the technology to fix it so readily available.

But Shane didn't grow up on Earth. He didn't have access to modern-day ophthalmological treatments. Didn't have friends. Didn't have porn, even, apparently.

Worse than that, he's never gone swimming in a lake, never felt the silky cool caress of the water inching higher and higher as he wades in. Never known the nervous delight of something you can't see brushing against your ankle, nor the time-honoured tradition of lying on the shore, watching water droplets evaporate in the sun. Hell, he's never even taken a real bath.

Ilya's heart wrenches.

"What?" Shane smiles. His eyes dart around, and Ilya interprets that as nervousness.

"Your glasses."

"Oh, yeah," he says before raising a hand to remove them.

"No," Ilya says firmly, and Shane stills. "Leave them on."

Shane drops his hand, licks his lips.

"Touch yourself." The command drips effortlessly from Ilya's lips like honey.

There is a pause, short and chasmic.

Shane brings his hand to his lap, strokes his cock over his jumpsuit.

Ilya zooms out so he can see the whole of Shane's body, his chest undulating in rhythm with his breath.

"Yes, like that. Is good."

Shane's breath hitches, his eyes fluttering shut.

"Unzip your suit," Ilya says as his own cock thickens by the second.

Without hesitation, Shane tugs down the zipper to reveal a nearly sheer white undershirt. He shrugs the uniform loose from his shoulders and it pools around his waist, a navy blue puddle of fabric.

"Good, but—need to see more."

"Greedy," Shane replies as he lifts his ass, slips the suit down to below the straining bulge in his underwear.

"Better. But—still need to see more." Ilya palms his own cock, squeezes.

Shane stretches the elastic of his briefs, pulls it down until it cradles his balls tautly. His dick looks hard—painfully so—and Ilya curses the space between them.

What he wouldn't do to wrap his lips around that cock, to swallow him down.

"Hollander, your cock is so hard."

"Rozanov, tell me something I don't fucking know."

"You are leaking."

"Again, I am aware."

"Your thumb," Ilya says, "run it through the wetness."

Shane complies, and it does something to Ilya the way he submits.

"Now taste yourself."

"What?"

"Taste yourself. Describe to me."

Shane's eyes snap to Ilya's, but he doesn't put up a fight, just pumps his cock twice before swiping his thumb across the slit at the head of his cock.

He brings it to his mouth, licks the pad of it tentatively with the tip of his tongue before sucking it fully into his mouth.

"Fuck," Ilya groans. "Tell me."

A vulgar pop echoes through the cockpit when Shane pulls his thumb out. "It's salty," he says huskily, "like tears, only—more bitter."

Ilya runs his own hand up and down the length of his dick. He's the hardest he ever remembers being. "Touch yourself, now," he says; then, "No, slower." Neither of them is going to last very long. Not him, but especially not Shane.

This is a man who's never had a sexual encounter with another human being. This is a desperate man. A man who will do anything.

Ilya wants him to have everything.

Shane strokes himself with what appears to be a tight fist. Knuckles white and cheeks a fiery red, he tips his head back, revealing the long line of his throat.

"Perfect. You are so perfect," Ilya mutters before regressing into Russian expletives.

"Ilya," Shane says, and Ilya gets it—why Shane wanted him to use his first name. It rings through Ilya's body like a resonant note. Despite the distance, despite the improbability, they are here, together.

"Ilya, I need…"

"What?"

"I need to see you. Please."

With all of the efficiency and grace of a world class athlete, Ilya strips down to his briefs, then watches Shane's expression intently as he removes the those last. Shane's facade is a shattered mirror.

"Fucking hell," Shane whimpers as he pumps his dick, and Ilya matches him stroke for stroke.

"I'm gonna come," Shane says.

Ilya's eyelids want to flutter shut, to surrender to the ecstasy, but he forces them to stay open, to watch as Shane's eyebrows scrunch together. His lips part and then: release.

Ropes of pearly white shoot from Shane's dick, painting his stomach and chest.

It's enough to send Ilya barrelling toward his own orgasm.

"Fuck, Shane," he punches out, grabbing his briefs just in time to catch his own powerful release. Coming in zero gravity is no joke. (Ask him how he knows.)

"That was so fucking hot," Shane says, voice saturated with blissed-out contentment.

"Yes. Was very hot."

It dawns on Ilya: This mission has always been dangerous, but this is the first time he might actually be in trouble.

Day 1420

It's been ten days since Ilya made contact with the Thunderbird. Ten days since he learned for certain he isn't completely, depressingly alone.

The past three days have played out similarly to Race Day. That's what Ilya is calling it now. A new reference point to measure against, to orient himself toward.

He and Shane have breakfast together, then perform their respective spacefarer tasks before meeting back in the afternoon to jerk off together. Ilya always tries to convince Shane to stick around after breakfast, but Shane insists on maintaining his routine.

Today, Ilya tries a different approach.

"Come on, Hollander," Ilya whines. He likes using Shane's last name when he's horny, but he does so sparingly. Shane asked him to call him by his first name, and he wants to honour that, even if the alternative gets him a brattier response.

"No."

"I will come to you. I have suit. One hour, that's it."

"Rozanov, no!"

"Fuck's sake, Shane, my AI has more personality than you,"

"You fucking asshole."

"Well, is true!"

"Ilya, there is protocol—"

"Fuck protocol, Hollander. Protocol is moot. Protocol ceased to exist when Earth exploded into trillion fucking pieces."

"No."

"No?"

"No. I can't—jeopardize the mission. Not mine. And not yours."

"Take off your clothes."

"What?"

"If you will not jeopardize our doomed fucking missions then I demand you take off your clothes. I want to watch your dick get hard to the sound of my voice."

Shane sets down his coffee. His eyes burn into Ilya's, a mixture of anger and desire. He removes his clothes slowly, folding each item into a perfect rectangle as he does.

It takes an eternity for him to get naked, but Ilya doesn't complain. What would be the point? Every minute not spent in this man's orbit is agony. The longer he can stretch it out the better.

"You think you're so fucking smart, don't you?" Shane asks. He just stands there, not touching himself. Ilya realizes he's doing exactly what was asked of him.

Ilya brings a hand to his chest, glances over both shoulders. "Who, me?"

"You think I don't know what you were doing?"

"And what was I doing, Shane?" Ilya licks his lips, watches Shane's dick twitch skyward.

"Demanding too much. So that your follow-up request seemed like a consolation."

"Ha. And they say you are not smart."

"Who says that? Everyone is dead."

"I'll let you work that one out, Mr. Intelligence," Ilya drawls.

"Fuck off!"

Shane is fully hard now, and Ilya pulls his own cock out in response.

"Sit down," he commands. "Then spread your legs."

Shane's jaw ticks. His Adam's apple works.

He's nervous. But he doesn't back down. He never backs down. He takes a seat in front of the camera, spreads his legs wide until Ilya can see the pink pucker of his hole.

"Fuck, Hollander," he says, stroking his dick with a loose fist. "Have you fingered yourself before?"

Shane doesn't answer verbally, just nods his head in the affirmative.

"Show me."

Without a word of protest, Shane sucks two fingers into his mouth until they're slick with spit. He brings them to his hole, circles the tight opening before pressing in, his ass swallowing both fingers with what appears to be very little resistance. It's the single hottest thing Ilya has ever seen in his life.

"Hollander, fuck. Look at you."

Shane starts pumping in and out, and with that little mewls of pleasure tumble from his lips.

"Imagine is my cock," Ilya says as he begins fucking his fist in earnest.

"Yeah, I want it."

"You want my big cock in your ass, Hollander?"

"Fuck, yes, I need it."

"You want me to come inside you, fill your hole with my seed?"

"Yeah."

"Can you come like this?"

"Yeah, I'm close."

"Fuck yourself harder for me, Shane."

Shane fucks himself harder, panting and moaning without a single shred of self-consciousness.

"Ilya."

"You prince, you angel, you fucking god amongst stars." Ilya says, but it falls too easily from his mouth for it not to be Russian.

"Come—now," he says, in English, he thinks, and Shane comes, legs quaking, dick spurting like Mount fucking Vesuvius.

Ilya follows, and—

yep, he forgot about the zero Gs.

Well, that's a concern for future him.

Day 1431

Three weeks. That's how long it takes for one of them to crack, ending this game of real-talk chicken.

It's Shane who loses, which doesn't surprise Ilya. And it's not because Shane is weak. It's because he's brave—far braver than Ilya ever could dream to be.

In this game, there are no winners.

For both of them, this is a blip in their respective missions. And when it's over, Shane is headed to Tau Ceti, meanwhile Ilya is headed to Alpha Centauri.

It's the plan. It's always been the plan.

The thing is, Ilya (as has already been pointed out) is not big on plans.

But Shane? Shane is a different kind of animal.

"You know Alpha Centauri was the first star system we visited," Shane says nonchalantly, between bites of breakfast burrito. The bounce of his knee betrays his cool demeanor though, and Ilya knows this is not an unserious kind of conversation. "I mean, I was only a baby, but I have access to all the mission logs and data."

"Yes, you mentioned. There is a planet there, yes? In the—" Ilya doesn't know the English words for the scientific term, so he waves his hand as if summoning it.

"Inhabitable zone," Shane supplies.

"Yes, inhabitable zone. And…" Ilya swallows, braces for the answer he's afraid of before he even asks the question. "Is habitable?"

Shane bites the inside of his cheek, looks away for a second before squaring his gaze. "It's not uninhabitable. Not entirely at least. But it would be…" he seems to consider his words. "It would be very difficult. The probability of even short-term survival would be ten percent."

Ten percent.

Ilya doesn't like those odds but then it's not like there is anything remotely close to a sure thing these days.

Shane fiddles nervously with his burrito wrapper.

"There's a supply cache not too far from here. An Earth year, maybe less." he says.

Ilya is gobsmacked. "A supply cache? How?"

"When they launched the Thunderbird, they also sent up four drone-piloted supply caches. My parents were never meant to return to Earth. They were supposed to live out their lives travelling between star systems. And for that they needed fuel. Supplies."

"Okay," Ilya says, the syllables drawn out. A lump forms in his throat. Made of fear-dipped hope.

"Come with me," Shane says quickly, and then the words start spilling from his lips like a dam has broken inside him. "To Tau Ceti. Don't go to Alpha Centauri. There are two confirmed candidate planets. Maybe more. And this ship was built to support two adults. I'm running low on supplies but if we hit the cache we'll have more than enough to get to Tau Ceti."

The lump grows bigger, presses on Ilya's trachea until he can hardly breathe. This is a choice he doesn't want to make. A choice that will likely kill him, if not by some external force than by an internal one—slowly and malignantly until he wished he was dead.

"Tau Ceti is not my mission, Hollander."

"I know but—"

"I have embryos," Ilya chokes out.

"You have…what?"

"Embryos. You know. Not person but could be if gestated to full term."

"No, fuck, I know what an embryo is, I just don't understand."

"They didn't send me up to space to just die, Hollander. They send me to repopulate. Start again."

"Oh."

"Yes. Oh."

"I didn't know."

"You didn't ask."

"Cosmonaut Rozanov," chimes Marleau's voice from the sleeping quarter speakers.

"What, Marleau? Is fucking middle of night."

"The night you are experiencing is artificial, and was designed to—"

"Oh, fuck off, you degenerate fucking computer. What do you want?" Ilya interrupts.

"Incoming audio from the Thunderbird."

"Accept! Accept!"

A crackle and then Ilya is calling out to the empty space, "Shane! Shane, are you okay?"

"Aww, were you worried about me, Rozanov?"

"You are not dying?"

"No, why would I be dying?"

"Well, is middle of night and—"

"Technically it's not night. Technically it's—"

"Oh my god, Hollander, are you actually fucking computer, too?"

"Am I fucking a computer?"

Ilya rubs his eyes, pinches the bridge of his nose. This man is exasperating beyond measure. And yet Ilya loves him. He fucking loves him.

Oh, Ilya is in so much trouble.

"Just—tell me what is going on. Why are you waking me up in middle of simulated night?"

"I have an idea."

"Okay."

"You said you have embryos, yes?"

"Yes."

"And I have temperature-controlled storage. I'd have to toss out most of the samples my parents collected over the past two decades to make room, but who cares?"

Shane keeps talking, and Ilya tries to interrupt.

"Hollander."

"…no one left on Earth to analyze them…"

"Hollander."

"…not like I need them for…"

"Shane!"

Shane stops talking.

"This not a bad idea, but the embryos need to gestate. Inside my ship is three gestation chambers. You and me can try to repopulate, but I don't think it works that way."

A laugh erupts from the comms and Ilya can almost imagine Shane is right there beside him.

"I already thought of this," Shane says through the laughter. "I think if you can remove the gestation chambers from your ship then float them over here, I can retrofit the third cryogenic station my parents built for me to support two gestation chambers."

Two is better than none.

And ten percent is hardly a chance at all.

But—can Ilya really do this? It's not just the mission he puts at risk, it's his heart. Maybe Shane doesn't love him like he's grown to love Shane. Maybe he never will. And, oh god, what if something happens to Shane? And then not only will he be alone but also completely fucking broken hearted. He wouldn't survive it. He knows that more than he knows anything. Shane's death would mean the same fate for Ilya.

"Ilya?" Shane says, interrupting his spiralling thoughts.

"You can do this?" Ilya asks. "You can—how you say?—retrofit your ship to accommodate gestation chambers?"

"I mean yeah, probably. My mom was one of the top engineers in the world, and my dad one of the top biologists. And if you send me the schematics, I'm sure between the two of us we can figure it out."

"And I thought you were just pretty face."

"That's on you, Roz."

"Yes. Is on me. And, if we do this, you will be on me. Riding me. Sucking me. Is Second Pilot's second most important job."

"Fuck you, Rozanov!"

The comms go quiet, then, and Ilya worries he's gone to far.

"That's not what this is, you know. You and me. It's more than that. And it's not just because we're the only two people still alive. I—I want you here, with me. I want to be with you. I want a future. With you."

"You really think that far ahead, Hollander?"

"I mean, yeah. About this."

"And…this is what you want?" Tears well in Ilya's eyes, and he wipes them away before they coat his eyeballs, as crying in zero G tends to result in.

"More than anything." Shane's voice is soft and earnest, and it fills Ilya with courage, makes him feel invincible.

Ilya takes a deep breath, calls on his mother and Sveta for strength. They would want this for him. They would tell him: Go, fly, take a chance, be happy. Be happy.

"I love you," Ilya says. It's nuts. It's absolutely fucking insane-bordering-on-irresponsible that he's even thinking it let alone saying it. Out loud. To a person he met just three weeks ago.

It's also the only thing in this godforsaken life he's unequivocally sure of.

What follows are the longest three seconds of silence he's ever endured.

"I love you, too," Shane says, finally. It's crisp and clear and in that same voice that said, "This is Shane Hollander, Canadian astronaut aboard the Thunderbird Vessel" only three weeks ago. Except…there is a quality about it that strikes Ilya's heart like a tuning fork.

It's the sound of a lover's smile.

They fall asleep like this, with their comms channels open.

It's the best sleep Ilya's had in decades.

Which is good, because… they have work to do.

Day 1445

Today is the day.

They're calling it The Great Migration.

Ilya is thankful for yet another new point of reference.

The last two weeks were spent building the gestation chambers and prepping the Thunderbird to receive the embryos. And yesterday, Ilya made the highest-stakes pass of his life when he sent the insulated embryos flying through space and into Shane's cradling arms.

They won't know for sure whether any of the embryos were corrupted in the transfer. Not until they attempt gestation. Still, Ilya is hopeful for once in his life.

He looks back at the aluminum tube that's been his home for the past four years, gives it the middle finger, and then pushes off. He's tethered himself to the ship, just in case. It would be pretty fucking dumb of him to make it this far only to overshoot his trajectory and end up floating into the void.

The seconds stretch on and Ilya wonders if this is what time dilation feels like. And then, just like that, he's in the Thunderbird's airlock.

He releases he tether and then the door slides shut, prompting a red light to go on indicating re-pressurization is in progress.

Ilya's heart is beating double-time, his pulse crashing in his ears like waves against a cliff.

When the green light flashes, his practiced hands twist and release the levers and clamps that keep his spacesuit airtight. He drops his helmet, only it doesn't hit the ground since Shane had to disable the ship's artificial gravity mechanism.

The second his suit is off, Ilya suddenly—gloriously—feels warm hands on his face, soft lips on his lips.

Shane kisses Ilya fervently, and Ilya kisses him right back. He tastes of peppermint, a hint of ginger. And then Shane's mouth curves up into a smile, and fuck if that's not the most decadent part yet.

Desperate to see Shane in the flesh—to just look at him—Ilya reaches for his very last remaining atom of will and breaks the kiss. He's rewarded with the sight of Shane's chestnut eyes, shining wetly.

Ilya brackets Shane's face with open palms, then wipes the tears gently with the pads of his thumbs, admiring Shane's angelic beauty as he does.

Is this what it feels like, Ilya wonders, to touch the sun? To bask in its mighty brilliance?

That the world had to end for the two of them to find each other is not a thought Ilya likes to consider.

As it is, he'll take what he's offered, gladly and with infinite gratitude.

"Hey. Heyyyyy," Shane says after a few solid minutes of them kissing and grinning like idiots.

Ilya didn't realize he'd been crying, and it's Shane's turn to be on tear-removal duty.

"There," Shane says, then reaches for Ilya's hand, strokes his thumb along the back of it. "Better?"

"Better," Ilya says as his eyes settle on the paint-splatter of freckles that have been driving him wild for the past four weeks.

On Shane's left cheek is Cepheus and Orion and Canis Major; on his right, Perseus and Virgo and Centaurus.

Lyra and Cassiopeia adorn the bridge of his nose, and Ilya kisses them all, one by one.

He smiles a private smile, says a silent prayer. Because they do taste like stardust.

Or maybe stardust tastes like Shane.

I’ve tagged this AU as having "non-canonical side character deaths.” That’s because everyone is dead. And I mean EVERYONE. Except for Ilya. And Shane. There are no graphic depictions of death, however, it is a thread throughout the whole fic and there are mentions of specific people having died.