a boat without oars // christopher lightwood {1}

twenty-eight // safe as houses

"Can I ask you something?"

Christopher wasn't sure how to read the tone of Pluto's voice. It sounded almost...teasing? Actually, he wasn't sure how to read any of xyr right now. Xe'd claimed rights to the washroom first, and he'd returned from his own trip to find xyr stripped down to the orange plaid shirt and sky blue leggings xe'd worn under xyr sweater and trousers, sitting in the middle of the bed, knees hugged up to xyr chest. Xe'd been very nonchalant about this whole thing – they were sharing the bed, xe got the side closest to the wall, and he should probably wear socks because Isafjordur was cold and this Institute, absurdly, had stone tile floors. He had wondered if perhaps that ease was xyr way of avoiding the whole situation – accept that it was happening in the simplest terms possible and discuss it no further. Now he was not so sure. Never mind how stunning xe looked in that loose plaid shirt. He should not be thinking about such things, it wasn't proper.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

"You said the Institute didn't ask you beforehand about our relationship to each other, they just kind of made the assumption that we were a couple, which is how we ended up here. If they had asked you, what would you have said we were?"

Christopher shrugged. "Co-conspirators?" He sat down on the side of the bed, still feeling a little awkward about getting in. Not uncomfortable, just more that he'd never shared a bed with anyone before, not even any of his friends, he didn't know the protocol, and he was still fighting that annoying little voice in the back of his head telling him this is highly improper. Shut up, he told it. It's not like we're actually going to do anything. "Partners in crime?"

Pluto chuckled and smiled and flopped onto xyr back, folding xyr hands on top of xyr ribcage and staring at the ceiling. "There's a lot of people in the future, they just say they're partners. I've always found that kind of interesting. I mean, what are you? Lovers? Cops? Cowboys?"

"Town marshals in a heated romance?"

"I like your thinking," said Pluto. Xe stuck xyr hand out, an invitation, and he reached for it. Xyr hands were so soft, so uncalloused compared to the hands he usually touched, small and long-fingered and cool to the touch now that xe'd had xyr gloves off for a while. Now he understood why xe was always wearing so many layers. Xe must be dreadfully cold all the time in London's damp chill. "I like to think of us as a team, you know? Like the X Files or something. Me with my wild ideas and you with the scientific backing to tell me when I've got something plausible and when I'm just inventing delusions." Xe glanced at the blankets between them. "You can get in, you know. Unless that bothers you, at which point you should have said something before I have to go waking people up in the middle of the night..." xe pulled xyr fingers away from his and put both hands over xyr face. "I'm overthinking this, aren't I?"

"You're fine." Christopher pulled his feet up and crawled in under the blankets with xyr. "And I'm fine. This is just so very new."

"So we're really doing this, then? I'm really going back on what I said this fast?" Pluto looked very faintly flushed, and xyr eyes were bright. He'd never seen xyr with such color before. In London xe'd always been so very pale, almost washed out, the dark red dye the only color on xyr. Here, xyr pale complexion tinted toward a soft shade of pink, xyr grey eyes were dark and silvery, there was real color in xyr cheeks, and xyr mouth, even a little across the bridge of xyr nose. "What?" Pluto asked. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"You seem different, here," he said. "More...vivid, if that makes any sense."

"It's the fresh air," Pluto said. "All that smog and dust in the city, I just felt awful. I mean, Isafjordur is a city too, but it's smaller and it's...cleaner? And I was out in the meadows out there for so long, too."

"I noticed that you seemed stronger out there," Christopher answered. "Even though we'd had so little to eat and we'd been walking for so long."

Pluto rolled onto xyr side to face him. "You should see me in an actual forest." There was something faintly suggestive, almost naughty in xyr tone. He found he liked it. Xe was comfortable enough to say things like that, and there was something deeply reassuring in it, that this didn't make xyr nervous, his presence here didn't bother xyr. He'd never want that.

"Can I ask you something, too?" he asked. He meant it a little more seriously this time.

"Go on."

"When we had to camp out in the meadows there," Christopher said, "and we took turns on watch, you didn't wake me for my turn until well after midnight. Can I ask why that was? Because something tells me it's not just that you've adjusted to a witching hour patrol schedule."

Pluto sighed. "Damn," xe said. "I've been trying to break that habit for years, you know? I just...I like to stay up as long as I can. I'm not afraid to sleep, but the space between closing your eyes and dreaming, it's so silent and I don't like it. The dark and quiet, the sensory deprivation, it keeps me up. So I like to be awake as long as I can, so I know I'll be more likely to doze off as soon as I try."

"Can I ask what you think about, that makes it so hard?"

"Nothing," said Pluto. "No, I'm completely serious. It's just too blank. Too quiet. And I try to fill it with things but that just keeps me awake."

"I'm probably not helping, am I?"

"I was going to be awake anyway," Pluto said. "I've got a lot to think about. A lot of big decisions to make."

"I'm one of them, aren't I?"

Pluto nodded. "I feel like...like I don't want to just turn around and jump back into this too fast. Because then I'll feel bad, for not sticking to the decision I made, for just going back on my word and causing all that heartbreak for nothing."

Christopher reached out, tentatively, and touched xyr cheek. He wanted to touch, oh, he did, but part of him was afraid that xe would flinch, would pull away and that would be it. "As much as I sometimes have trouble understanding why you broke my heart like that, I have trouble understanding why it was me you chose. Out of all of us in our set..." he shook his head. "I'm not...not as strong, not as glamorous, not as bold...I'm just a little absentminded inventor who happens to have a place with electrical wiring safe enough for your computer."

"You were the first person that actually believed what I was saying, when I got here and I thought I was totally alone. You asked for my boot, and you sniffed it –" Pluto laughed. "You sniffed my boot, as if that's a normal thing to do, and you went, 'no, that's plastic, plastic doesn't exist yet,' and you told them I had to be from where I said I was from. You've helped me when I'm stuck with this case, and you've helped me when I knew where it was going and I didn't want to follow it. And that's without talking about how sweet you are, how intelligent and kind, or that smile of yours, or the color of your eyes..." xe shrugged. "As for not being glamorous or bold, well, you're bold enough to share a bed with me and considering your hands are already trying to wander up the back of my shirt..."

Christopher paused in the middle of drawing patterns on xyr spine. "Do you want me to stop?"

"Not really. And scientists can be very glamorous, when they want to be. You just haven't met Jack Parsons yet."

______________
author's notes:
actually, I'm not sure what Christopher would think of Jack Parsons. he'd probably be appalled. (jack parsons was the JPL chemist who basically developed the fuel that NASA used to get its first rockets into orbit. he was also an occultist, and possibly a sex cultist. anyway.)

next week: why Pluto's training started so late, and why xe only has two runes.