It may have been a fit of madness, or just desperation, but he pulled up the contacts on his holowatch and called the sibling line. The likelihood of either his brother or sister picking up was slim, but it was late enough that one of them might.

"Lio," Alonso's face suddenly burst above his wrist, and he let out a yelp of surprise. "Are you alright?"

He hadn't expected him to answer quite that quickly. "Hello! Yes, I'm—you startled me."

Alonso's brow wrinkled, but when he opened his mouth to say something, he was interrupted by a much louder voice.

"Lio, what's going on?" Alina's screen loomed beside Alonso's.

"Nothing!" He scrambled to sit up on his bed. "Goddess, what is wrong with both of you?"

Alina sighed. "Alior, you don't call unless it's an emergency."

"That's not true!"

"Alright, alright," Alonso, ever the peacekeeper, cut in. "What Alina and I are doing a poor job of saying, Lio, is that we're delighted to hear from you. Especially if everything is fine. How are you?"

"I'm wonderful." He prowled over to one of his crystals, picked it up, and set it back down again before looking back at their faces. He got silence, and two perfectly blank expressions. They knew how to get him to crack. "Fine," he groaned. "I'm...something's wrong with me. I don't know what it is."

"Do you want to talk about it, or would you rather be distracted from it?" Alonso asked.

"Talk, I suppose. It's...there's this...man."

"Who you met in a bar." Alina let out a noisy sigh.

He huffed back at her. "Yes, I did meet him in a bar, and so what?"

"That's not safe for you, Lio—"

"Alina," Alonso's deep, reassuring voice cajoled her into pausing. "This is why he never calls us."

"Excuse me, I'm trying to help!" she squawked. "And that was mean! For someone whose entire profession is handling people, you're supposed to have more tact, Lonso!"

"Firstly, I feel compelled to point out that you are a shipping titan with the emotional hide of a rhino, so you can take a little bluntness, and secondly, I spend my entire day being tactful to the All-Territories Council. I'm fresh out of tact. You, my dear siblings, are stuck with me no matter what." Alonso lifted a wine glass at them through the screen.

"Oh shut it, Alonso, I want to hear more about the man. Go on, Lio."

He raised his eyebrows. "Thanks. Um. So yes, I did meet him in a perfectly safe bar, and he at no point tried to kidnap me"—Alina rolled her eyes at him, but he continued—"and it was all lovely. And then I saw him again, and, ah, slept with him again. But just...rather recently, when I thought we might...I don't know. He sort of put me off."

"Well, he's an idiot!" Alina said staunchly.

"No," Lio sputtered, but she earned a smile. "He's not. He was...he was at his work, and I was the one being an idiot. That's not the problem. The problem is that I left and somewhat lost my mind. Slightly. I don't know. It's not the first time it hasn't worked out with someone, and he was really just asking me not to proposition him at work, but it felt worse than that, and I don't know why." He raked a hand through his hair. "I suppose I thought we'd be spending more time together. But we're not. I want to so much. And maybe he...doesn't."

"What's he like?" Alina asked.

A fresh wave of longing broke over him. "Amazing. Funny. Kind. Very smart, in more ways than one. He pays attention to people. He pushes me to be better." He let out a slow breath. "See?" he said, scrubbing his eyes with his sleeve. "Something is wrong with me!"

"It sounds as if you care for him a great deal," Alonso said gently. "Perhaps more than you're used to."

Lio swallowed. That had a ring of truth to it. And not just because Alonso had a way of making everything reverberate with higher truths when he wanted.

"When you saw him at his work," Alina broke in, "why'd you go to him?"

"I thought—I wanted—" He knew what he would normally say. Enjoyment. A bit of fun. To be desired for something other than his family name or credits. But it was more than that with Ravi. He'd gone because the day had felt dreary without him, and he wanted a chance to make him laugh, and hear his voice, and be wrapped in his arms. "I think I just wanted to be with him."

When he looked up from staring at his toes, Alonso and Alina were both smiling fondly at him.

Alonso cleared his throat. "Do you know if he wants something similar? Because if he does, I think you've got a good problem."

He lay awake long after the call, staring at the low ceiling above his bed. Strange, that something so obvious had escaped him. Of course he'd cried. He wanted more from Ravi than he could possibly have. Alonso was right about many things, but he was wrong that everything would be solved if Ravi felt the same way. He remembered the way Ravi looked at him when he'd gone to leave the bedroom after Starmesa. Leaving had been necessary, to minimize the risk of being caught returning to his own room. Ravi hadn't protested it, but the look in his eyes had almost made Lio risk slipping back and staying, no matter what happened in the morning. He should've known right then. It was never usually so difficult to drag himself away.

It still didn't mean that it was right to take what he wanted. If they kept things going, kept tangling further, the moment when they were torn apart would be agonizing. And even if he thought he could bear it, he had no right to put Ravi in that position. Ravi had already borne too much unfair hurt. Already spent too long loving someone who would not stay. Lio would end up being another scar. Another lost year.

At some point, swamped in unhappy thoughts, he fell asleep.

The morning was no better. He dragged himself to the mess hall, and then out in the desert to pick rocks. By the time they finally returned to Opalina again, weary but with the commendation task completed, he knew what he needed to do. At least in the short term.

He went to the com office again and knocked. This time, when the door scrolled back, only Ravi waited. He glanced up and gave Lio a cautious smile, half his attention still on the large screen projecting some rapidly scrolling list. "Hey. You want to sit?" he nodded to the empty chair opposite the desk.

"That's alright." Goddess, he felt awful. "I just came in to ask...if it's too late to file my dispensation paperwork. To go home for the break."

Ravi jerked away from the screen. He stared at him for a moment, and then touched the screen to switch it off. "No, it's not too late." He reached slowly for his slate, and looked down at it, blinking. Then his gaze flew back up to Lio's. "I thought you planned to stay here."

"That was what I intended, but—" He'd meant to blame it on his mother. Say she insisted. But Ravi was looking at him, his face unnaturally still, his eyes over-bright, and he couldn't get the words out.

"Okay. I can send you the forms." Ravi bowed his head down for a moment, and then he let out a harsh breath and tossed the slate onto the desk. "Look, this isn't because of yesterday, is it? Because I wasn't enough fun, or I take everything too seriously—"

"No!" He hated hearing Gadsen's words in Ravi's mouth. They must've been there for so long, clawing at him. "No, that's not at all why I—" Fuck it, he needed to at least try to explain. He slumped into the chair. "Ravi, I'm...I really, quite desperately, want to be with you. All the time. And I don't think I understood until yesterday what I want from you, and on top of that, I have no idea how much longer I'm even going to be here, and it just seemed..." He swallowed tightly. "You told me to stop thinking only of myself. I'm trying to do the right thing."

"What do you want from me?" Ravi asked. He clutched the armrests of his chair like he was chained there.

"Everything," Lio said, miserably. "I want everything, even though I'm the wrong person to give it to."

Ravi exhaled. He propped his elbows on the desk, hands laced, and looked at Lio warily. "Are you...do you want to give this an actual shot?"

He dragged his hand over his face. "I do, but I can't. That's it. You're...you're wonderful. And I'm leaving in a matter of months. If I even get that long."

Ravi leaned halfway across the desk. "I don't care about that, Lio. If you want to try, I want to try. I've been wanting to try since that morning at Ferdi's, I just didn't think—" He closed his eyes and took a breath. Then flung himself back in his chair, shoulders slumped. "I know you've got some family shit that could make things difficult. I've got plenty of my own shit that could make thing difficult. Doesn't mean we can't try."

"I..." This hadn't gone at all to plan. Thank all the sister goddesses. "I don't want to hurt you."

"Stay. During dispensation week. Stay with me." Ravi stretched one hand out to him, palm open, and Lio took it.

He never stayed. But for this man, he would. Ravi could ask anything of him. "Alright," he whispered. He would stay, and they would steal all the time they could.