Prompt: Stars for Victuuri
“What’s it like?” The question comes soft and timid, nearly lost in the gentle sighs of the wind as it breathes past them. The sound it pulls out of the tall, silken white grass is nearly musical—if he wasn’t looking at a night sky occupied by three separate moons in varying stages, it would be a visceral reminder of how very far from home Victor truly is.
“What’s what like?” Victor keeps his voice just as quiet, as if speaking any louder might shatter the sky around them. Which, he’s learned, could very well happen on some planets.
(Okay, maybe not something quite so dire, but he can’t say with confidence that there wouldn’t be any consequences for even the smallest of things.
The preparations for going off planet are immensely extensive and mind-bogglingly thorough.
Victor still doesn’t think it’s enough.)
“Where you come from.” Yuuri turns to look at him, and he looks nearly human in that moment except for the way his eyes refract the moonlight like the finest quality gemstones. Victor wonders what color they would be, if Yuuri wasn’t an alien.
Then he remembers that out of the entire population on this planet with a name he can’t pronounce, he’s the one who’s different. Here, Victor is the alien, not Yuuri.
“What’s it like?” Yuuri reiterates, letting the grass curl around his hand. When he touches it, the end lights up like a firefly, and Victor’s throat tightens at the simple beauty of it.
How does he tell Yuuri about Earth when this is the world he knows? How does he talk about a planet that his race used and abused and are only now making any sort of dent in the damage their ancestors did? What is Earth’s soiled water and dead fields to all of this?
“I’ve never been anywhere else,” Yuuri continues, letting the plant lights fade away and turning back to the stars and constellations that look nothing like the ones Victor can see from Earth. “But I’m sure if it’s where you come from, it must be very beautiful.”
Victor can feel the blush from his collarbones to his hairline, and he is thankful that Yuuri’s people do not have a propensity for seeing in the dark. He swallows thickly, looking up at the stars instead of the fine, shimmering fibers that serve as Yuuri’s eyelashes, and reaches blindly in the grass for Yuuri’s hand. The skin is rougher than it looks, hard and cold to the touch like raw minerals, and thinks that however little he thinks of his own planet, there’s a very good chance that Yuuri will look upon it with the same awe that Victor feels now.
“I’ll take you there one day,” he promises, and Yuuri gives his hand a gentle, hopeful squeeze.
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