"Everything?" Shiro breaks into a laugh, a melodic rumble deep within his chest. "I think we're going to freeze before we can do everything."

He takes my trembling hand. My skin tingles. Sparks eddy through my knuckles, my wrist, my arm. I breathe in a steeling lungful of cold cab air.

Shiro's fingers retreat. His eyebrows bunch with concern. "It's OK if you don't want to. We can just keep warm together."

"I want to," I whisper. My breaths putter out of me, shallow and erratic. I suck in another deep breath. "Just nervous."

"You only ever been with sims before?"

"Yeah."

"Sim men or women or..?"

"Whoever."

For a parasite like me, the safest option is to design a metaverse simulation, an attractive and artificial lover who will never ask me difficult questions, and who will conveniently disappear the moment I disconnect from the metaverse. Sims are so alluring that I'm not surprised that most Edgers avoid real relationships, instead spending every evening in the metaverse, on fantastic adventures in sim houses on a sim Earth, with sim partners and sim children. When real life on the Edge is so bleak, I don't blame them for seeking solace in fantasy.

As beautiful as sims are, artificial perfection seems totally inadequate when compared to Shiro's rough-hewn attention on me: he's shabby and weathered, yet so very real.

No longer the picture of a frail criminal, Shiro sits alert and attentive, his previously shade-glazed eyes suddenly alight with brilliance. "What do you like?"

"I don't know."

An exploratory fingertip slides from clavicle, to neck, to cheek, tracing a burning path along my beard. "Are you a man too?"

I smile. "No. I'm just me. Just Heems."

"Can I kiss you, Heems?"

This can't be real. This must all be a terrible coincidence. Shiro's meatware must have a momentary glitch, and any minute now it will reset and my kiss will drain him, like it drained Ying.

Long moments of holding my breath with Shiro's fingertips gentle against my cheek, yet the bliss of feeding doesn't come. Shiro doesn't slip into a coma in my arms. He's not my host, and for once, I'm not a parasite.

"Yes." I look up into bright, hopeful eyes. "Kiss me."

Slender fingers splay over my jaw, dragging a whimper out of me. The softest of kisses pop onto my cheeks, my eyelids, my lips, like warm raindrops. Not the acidic drizzle of Eris-1's dome, but a rhythmic pattering, like the first day of a monsoon on Earth. I'd never have imagined that there could be any better feeling than the heady rush of energy through my veins when feeding, but feeding is nothing compared to Shiro's warmth. He feels so good that I want to scream into the storm.

Somewhere beneath the ecstasy my dormant courage awakens. Hesitant fingers somehow find their way into Shiro's hair and down his long pale neck, sliding over each vertebra with a wondrous bump. I ease off clothes and cling tight to Shiro as he works on us. He's brought my myriad metaverse fantasies to life — his touch doesn't feed me, and my touch doesn't drain him. Every moment that he remains immune to my vampirism makes the joy sweeter. My cheeks hurt from smiling. I can't stop smiling or I'll cry.

Blissfully sleepy, I sit up to inspect the intricacies of Shiro's decorated skin. A tattoo of a shining black koi swims across his back, weaving between two blood-red lily pads. His arms and legs are scattered with cherry blossom, chains of mountains and white cranes in flight. I press my lips to his forehead, his nose, his chin. So close to death, how has he made my universe so shining, new and brilliant?

Shiro twists me around to eye my back tattoo of the Goddess mounted on her charging tiger, her weapons gleaming. "I've never met a religious person before."

I invoke the gods so many times each sol that anyone would pity me as one of the few remaining believers. Doubtless Shiro will pity me even more if I admit that with every utterance of the Goddess and Lord Shiva's names, I'm simply calling out to my parents.

I owe Shiro this one truth. "I'm not religious. I don't have a family so... the Holy Family makes me feel... less alone."

"Pretty. I like mountains." Shiro changes the subject with a clumsiness that makes me chuckle. He runs chilled fingers over the tattoo of the Holy Mountain on my chest, barely visible under whorls of hair.

"Mount Kailash. The abode of the Holy Family." I notice a conical mountain tattooed in almost the same place on Shiro's chest, and trace its outline in reply. "You have one too."

"Fuji-san." His eyelids flutter closed and his breath halts, as if he's in intense pain. His body stills whilst whatever hurt he's feeling seemingly pulses in his heart for a few moments, and then passes. "I was planning to visit Earth to see Fuji-san. I can't now."

The shade must be confusing Shiro. Neither he nor anyone Eris-born — except for perhaps the Governor-General — is even allowed a passport to Earth. The closest us Edgers will ever get to Earth is exploring metaverse sims of Earth's forests and valleys. Perhaps that's what Shiro means.

He shakes his head as if to dispel his melancholy. His eyes brighten. "I wish the storm hadn't killed our lens signals. We could have done this in the metaverse. We could be in a cosy pod, or on a beach. Or in the mountains."

I cast my eyes around me, taking in the cab's steel sheeting and the methane flurries buffeting the viewers. "I like that I'm here, in a stolen 'porter in a storm. With you."

My toes have begun to numb; the heat supply must finally be dead. In a few hours' time IndoChina Mining personnel will find us petrified by Eris's cold. Though they'll probably assume that Shiro and I clung together in desperation to keep warm, my hope is that our forever-slumbering faces will shine with the sweetness we shared before death.

"It's best that we sleep." Shiro tucks us under blankets and winds his limbs between mine. "You should have used the last dregs of the power supply to keep your suit warm. You'd have outlasted the storm."

I smile. I was wrong about Shiro. He's so very beautiful. His hair isn't quite straight. It has the slightest wave to it as it falls across his forehead. His eyes are piercing and bright as they dart around my face, analysing, exploring, enjoying.

Two hours ago I'd been a parasite and Shiro had been yet another shade-brained host. Now he's mine to touch, all over, as we face death together. It doesn't matter that we'll never get to visit Megumi Kida. If the key to fixing my meatware will die with Shiro, then I'm content to die with him.

"You're so smiley," Shiro whispers close to my ear.

My jaw does indeed ache from smiling. Aside from daily greetings to my hospital colleagues, I can't remember ever having truly smiled until today.

"I... I think I'm happy."

The admission rocks me. I've never been happy before. I've felt the exquisite bliss of feeding. I've felt pleasure with sims. But Shiro is something else entirely. I certainly shouldn't be happy in my final moments, but I am.

"It felt better with me than with a sim, right?"

"Shiro," I try to suppress my smile, but the effort has me smiling all the harder, "this is the best day of my life."

"The day that you die is the best day of your life." He sniggers into our blankets. "You're either a very good liar, or you have very low standards."

It's both; I've lied since I was four years old, and my pathetic standard of a perfect life is one in which I don't kill anyone. I hesitate for long moments before teasing out a little confession. I tell myself that it's merely to explain to Shiro why I'm sanguine in the face of the storm, but my parched heart greedily soaks up the catharsis.

"My meatware's faulty. I wouldn't have lasted much longer anyway."

"I... I only have a few weeks left too," he murmurs, as if it's the first time he's admitted it aloud. "I should have stayed underground. I have acute radiation sickness."

"I know."

The temperature drops, and Shiro begins to weep silently, maybe lamenting his sister, his radiation sickness, or whatever unknowable childhood tragedy set him on a descent towards the Edge's ore smuggling rings. The sight of his tears sends the ghosts of my own pain shivering over me. The shadow of an intense agony that I haven't felt since I was four years old descends on our makeshift bed.

"I'm so sorry, Shiro." Not knowing what else to do, I dry his tears whilst whispering a million sillinesses about Earth sims I've tried, of hiking in temperate forests and canoeing along rainforest rivers of the magnificent home I'll never set foot on. He quietens and settles against me with a little smile, as if his heart is lighter. Mine is too.

Nestled with Shiro against me, I teeter on the edge of sleep. My nights are usually plagued with nightmares: the wardens are hunting me, or vengeful phantoms of the victims I've fed on are rising up to kill me. I don't know if it's the bliss, the shade, or the cold seeping into my bones, but I slip into the soundest — and the last — sleep of my life.

~~☆☆☆~~

00:07, Secondsol 13th M5, 2226

Shrill shouts and the stomp of boots ring in my ears.

My body jolts upright.

I'm not dead.

I'm freezing. My limbs are like blocks of ice.

I blink away sleep. A steel-grey uniform blurs in and out of focus. Perhaps I'm having a nightmare before I die. I attempt to curl into Shiro's warmth, but he's not by my side.

"Shiro?" I rub at my eyes, groping across the mattress. Shiro's side of our tiny bed is empty.

He's gone.

"Don't move."

Still blinking myself awake, I shuffle forwards on my knees. My nose brushes against a warden's pulser.

The Summer I Really Didn't Kidnap Lance Hardwood by BrianMullin0 (he/him).