Right Back After This

Episode 11

Riz could have easily predicted that it wasn't going to be as simple as him and Kiel winning some trip together. In the meeting later, Sonja had clarified that this was always the plan, that they were always going to bring everyone regardless of who won. Still, everyone performed surprise on camera when they announced, "you're all going!"

Allegedly, Riz and Kiel hadn't won the trip, but instead some nebulous special prize, to be revealed when they got there. Somehow, in that, they were going to play Riz and Kiel off of each other, while keeping focus on the plotlines they'd always intended.

Interstellar travel is not Riz's favourite thing. It's not as immediately terrifying as the prospect of hanging above open water, one mere mistake away from drowning. Still, Riz had a documented fear of the void, a term thrown about far too casually for how deathly it sounded, and felt. He liked being planetside, feet on firm ground that could not crumble and explode from pressure. It's a natural human instinct, exacerbated by shoving himself inside the hull of a ship as a teenager, which is a part of his story he once again couldn't tell.

He spends that night restless, and makes no attempt to hide it. It's no secret to him that fans think his fears are cute. It paints him as unimposing, approachable, for him to fear all the things his sheltered teenage fans do- or more. He can stare at his ceiling that they can't see, mutter to himself about how he wished teleportation existed; he can stare out the window at Colian's shadow and silently long for his hug again. The only thing he can't do is go ask for it.

In the morning, though, there is one person he can hug, and he all but runs to get the comfort he's been aching for all night. Amello is standing in the kitchen, still in his pyjamas, casually making breakfast. Riz tackles him from behind, wrapping his arms tight around his chest. It's that sickly sweet caramel smell, something so superreal, something Riz has only ever known on this planet. It's funny, how the little things illustrate the gap. Riz has never gotten to ask Amello for real, without a listening ear jammed into his jaw, if what he's been told about his backstory is the truth. If Amello really spent his whole life training for this, if he grew up on a goldworld with all the sweetness that would've come with that. If he knew what caramel tasted like as a child- if he knew that most humans never would.

"Hey," Amello says softly, in that low voice of his that Riz lets himself love. There's something different about the sound, when it's Amello, in both a good and a bad way. Riz has never examined his feelings on the subject, because he was never told to. The fact that it isn't forbidden, that his sigh of longing for Amello isn't going to be hopeless, keeps him away from it. It makes his want hollow, as much as it's all the more tempting for being easy.

Still, when the complications are stripped away, he likes the sound of Amello's voice. It's comforting; when it's like that, tired and rough, he likes it in a few different ways.

He's still thinking about what happened with Ares. Again, when the complications are stripped away, he's probably going to need the fucking outlet. He just hopes Ares makes it easy, makes it simple, cuts away the strings. Strings are the last thing Riz wants from Ares.

"Hi," Riz mutters, so muted his mic is probably the only thing to pick it up- Amello probably didn't hear him, and simply guesses what he said. Something is sizzling, but Amello holds Riz's hands on his chest anyway, as if he doesn't care if breakfast burns.

"Whatcha cooking?" Riz asks. He didn't look and all he can smell is Amello.

"Bacon and eggs," Amello says, and that can mean honestly anything. It could mean the real meat and real eggs of real Earth animals. It could mean some kind of meat and eggs from something found on Bryten or another nearby planet, that taste similar enough. It could be lab-grown, or otherwise synthetic, or made of any plant they can twist into the right shape. On Majadha, the idea of bacon and eggs existed, but most of the lifeforms native to that planet would be called bugs by most. If they weren't poisonous, they were bland, and so Riz's first instinct is to wrinkle his nose. Majadha's options gave him a solid base to tolerate the rather bland rations that made their way around Deliquet.