A/N: Phew. It's been a while. And let me tell ya, it's good to be back.

This fic was written for the Lionheart Kiribaku Zine. I had such a wonderful time working on this project with so many other talented authors and artists. They really inspired me and helped me get back into the swing of writing again!

Rated M for various mental health crises. T/W: isolation, depression, panic attacks, suicidal ideation. Our boy Kirishima is really going through it D:

As always, I look forward to reading your comments!

Enjoy!!

･*✧*･

Eijirou breathed in. He breathed out. Again and again, each deep inhalation and exhalation washing relief over him. He was alive. Somehow, he'd survived.

After prying shaky fingers away from the pilot yoke, Eijirou brought his hands to his head and groaned. Waking up from cryosleep was always nasty business, but he'd gotten used to it after being put under a few dozen times. Back home, it had been a controlled process, with a whole crew of scientists monitoring him as the cryochamber systematically thawed him and woke him up in stages.

But this time, the ship had overridden that process, thawing him much too quickly. He was forced awake to flashing lights, a blaring alarm, and the words " HYDRAULICS SYSTEM FAILURE'' blinking red on the piloting screen. He'd had no choice but to pilot the ship to the nearest planet, through an unfamiliar atmosphere, before crashing and stuttering to a halt on rocky terrain.

Hopefully, this was the right planet. A nice, habitable planet. One with air and water and optimal atmospheric conditions.

As the dust settled around his spacecraft, Eijirou let out one last groan before lowering his hands from his head to examine the terrain outside the flight deck window. Orange and dusty, like his trips to Mars but somehow more... eerie, made almost sinister by a harsh glow emanating from the horizon, please don't be lava, please don't be lava, the briefing said nothing about lava...

Eijirou swiveled his seat over to the piloting screen — cracked from one side to the other, not a single pixel lit.

"No, no, no," he muttered, smacking the edge of the monitor. A flurry of light danced across the screen before fizzling out entirely. "Come on, come on, come on, atmosphere scan, environment test, give me something to work with here—" he smacked it again.

In a flicker came a scroll of text:

ATMOSPHERIC SCAN COMPLETE

OXYGEN CONCENTRATION: CRITICAL

TOXINS: PRESENT

ATMOSPHERE NOT SUITABLE FOR RESPIRATION

Then, the screen fizzled to black.

So. Probably not the right planet, then.

Great.

Just then, the glowing buttons and switches on the control panel blinked off in clusters, and Eijirou could only sit with wide, horrified eyes as the gentle thrumming around him dwindled to a deafening silence. His ship had lost power.

Eijirou took a deep breath, then another. That was the first lesson in his training — he had to stay calm. Calm and rational. He had to work the problem.

Emergency landing on an uninhabitable planet with no power, three months' worth of food and water, three months' oxygen supply, and a pistol he'd sworn he would never use? That wasn't exactly the best place to start. He had to re-frame this in his head. A planet orbiting a star? Eijirou nodded to himself. He could work with that.

He stood on shaky legs, only to be immediately knocked off them by a tremor under his feet. He yelped as each part of the ship rattled, pieces of metal groaning against their fastenings as the very planet itself seemed to want to bring him to his knees. Earthquakes. Or, planet-quakes. He'd handled his fair share of those back in Japan.

Ignoring the tremors, he struggled past his cot and cryochamber over to the main electrical panel. This planet's sun was high in the sky. Of all the solar panels welded to the outside of his ship, surely some of them would still be able to power his generator. Steadying himself against a wall to offset the trembling underneath him, Eijirou flipped switches and pressed buttons and prayed to any god out there that he was remembering the procedure correctly.

His finger hovered over the final switch. "This had better work," he grimaced.

With a flick, the lights on the panels began to glow, accompanied by the low hum of a ship coming back to life.

"And, let there be light," Eijirou let out a breathless laugh. It grew and grew, and before long he was whooping and hollering, fist punching the air. He had power! The screen on the control panel may have been a complete write-off, but he had light! He had temperature control! A distress signal!

Eijirou gasped. He had a distress signal! He ran to the main console, and sure enough, the big button glowed with a faint white light. If he held it down long enough, it would turn green and send out a beacon signal to let humanity know that this planet was habitable. Which, it wasn't. So instead, he flipped over the safety cage and pressed it so it flashed red. Distress. Please send help.

Eijirou collapsed in the pilot seat, gasping as adrenaline rushed in his ears. Slowly, his breathing leveled out, heart rate calming as he stared at the mesmerizing flash of the distress button. This was what his training was all for. He could do this. He didn't have another choice.

But as he sat there, slumped in the pilot seat, dread settled in his stomach. He may have survived catastrophe and destruction. He may have survived waking up from being frozen god-knows-how-long in a tiny chamber hurtling through space. He may have survived atmospheric entry and crash-landing on a strange new world. But unless humanity had made leaps and bounds of technological advances since his departure like they'd hoped they would... he was stuck here.

That was okay. It was a possible outcome — the most likely outcome, really. They had gone over this in his training. He could wait. He was fine.

He took a deep breath.

Everything was going to be fine.

･*✧*･

The thing about being stuck in an itty-bitty spacecraft, on a shaky little planet, surrounded by an atmosphere that would suffocate him in an instant if given the chance, was that there was absolutely nothing to do.

This planet was freaking depressing. And he was from Earth.

Eijirou stared out the flight deck windshield, his feet hitched up on the dash next to the flashing distress button, sucking mashed-bean-like paste from a food pouch with a grimace. The ache in his muscles ran deep, his sudden wake from cryosleep still taking its toll even days later. He needed more room to stretch out, work his muscles to stop them from atrophying. But with the limited oxygen supply, an excursion to the surface of the planet would be stupid, and his rationing of nutrients made exercise a no-go, too.

He had to survive for as long as possible, on the off-chance a rescue crew came for him. That was the procedure. He'd stare out the window for months on end if that meant he'd stay alive.

At least the lava field in the distance was staying put.

The ground trembled. There were very few instances where the ground wasn't trembling. Eijirou had learned to ignore it most of the time, but the occasional quake threw him out of his chair — and maybe it was just in his head, but they seemed to be getting worse. It was as if the planet was a waking animal, shaking its head to make a fly get off, get off, get off—

"—Get off."

Eijirou shuddered. He didn't like what that analogy made him.

At least the days felt like Earth days. It was nice, having some measure of the passage of time to center a schedule around. But even that came with a downside — he was distinctly aware of roughly how many more days of oxygen he had left. How many food pouches. How many liters of water.

He'd sleep in his cot when it turned dark, awake at the break of day, drink a food pouch in the pilot seat, chisel a notch on the rim of the main console with his pocket knife. Like an inmate scratching a tally onto his cell wall, counting the days towards his own execution.

There were eight notches now. Tomorrow, there would be nine.

･*✧*･

Another day, another night, another morning. Another empty food pouch, another liter of water gone, another notch scarring the only corner of the universe he had left, another night. With every new notch, the fog in his mind became thicker and thicker and the pit in his stomach grew.

･*✧*･

The thought that his friends and family could all be gone already, that he was too late, kept Eijirou awake most nights. The nights he did manage to sleep, he dreamed of them. Their brash laughter, their board game nights, their easy smiles that always reached their eyes. He usually woke up shouting.

Between time dilation in space and his unknown length of time in cryo, that could have happened hundreds of years ago. Thousands, even.

But for Eijirou, it had been only four years since he opened his acceptance letter to the Space Institute's astronaut training program. Four years since starting an intense new life with his new crewmates turned best friends, Mina, Tetsutetsu, Sero, Kaminari. Three years since their first research mission to Mars, testing the most promising terraformation technology yet — terraformation technology that, despite everything, had failed. Two years since the creation of a new program, The Drifter Program. One year since an envelope arrived with an official seal containing an acceptance letter that confirmed he'd been selected to find a home amongst the stars.

Three weeks since he last hugged his family and friends goodbye. Since the glass of his cryochamber frosted over for the last time, obscuring his mother smiling through her tears, "I love you, I'm so proud of you, go, get off this cursed planet," the ground shaking, splitting around a giant fissure, sucking everyone into it, "Get away from here," his mom was shouting, "Get off this planet," but it was too late, they were all going to die—

"—Get off this planet—"

Eijirou jolted awake to yet another quake. He gasped for breath before reaching up to touch the dampness on his face — sweat on his brow and tears on his cheeks. From where he lay, he could just see the moonless dark of the night sky out of his cot's porthole. It wasn't even morning yet, the only light shining from the stars and the field of lava in the distance. He buried his face in his hands. Let out a breath that shook as much as the ground underneath him.

"Get off this planet."

Eijirou yelped.

He bolted upright, frantically looking this way and that. Forget the quake — that had definitely been out loud. As if a voice had spoken right next to him. But of course, no one was there.

The voice sounded again, booming. "I said, get off this planet."

Eijirou cowered in his cot and covered his ears. "Oh, god," he whimpered.

･*✧*･

The Space Institute's head neuroscientist had warned them of the cognitive and neurological effects of isolation. Humans were simply not built for it. If there was nothing to keep the brain occupied, it had a habit of just making shit up.

"That's just how it is," she'd explained. "We'll upload materials for you to occupy yourselves with, should you find yourself alone for an extended period of time. But since you will be the only ones manning your respective crafts, you need to prepare yourself for any adverse effects."

Crossword puzzles. Old sitcom episodes. Virtual hikes down a mountain trail. Videos from his family and friends wishing him luck and telling him how much they believed in him. It was all there, just a few taps on a screen away. A few taps on a screen that was cracked beyond repair.

So instead, Eijirou started seeing impossible shapes moving in his peripherals. Einstein's field equations and Euler angles and geodesics scratching themselves into the wall of the flight deck beside him. Stars shining through the ceiling above him, the distant lava field transforming into the bay he'd walk along the shore of as a child. Swirls of color pulsing to the beat of the glowing distress button. Sometimes he would allow the flowing rivers of colors to lull him into a fitful sleep. But most times, he would blink, and the visions would disappear.

The worst, though, was what Eijirou heard. His Space Training instructors briefing him on an upcoming mission. Kaminari or Mina asking to review their assignments for their seminars. A persistent journalist asking for a soundbite for the media to tear apart. His mom calling for him to come inside for dinner. Incoherent whispers growing and growing into a terrifying, wordless cacophony. None of those voices were real, so Eijirou tried not to listen to them. Maybe, if he listened, he'd go insane.

But then, there was the voice. Unfamiliar. Unwelcoming. A lot harder to ignore.

"Get off this planet."

Thirty-one notches total, well over a week since the voice first appeared, and it still wouldn't shut up. Along with this voice was a foreboding presence. Whenever it spoke, Eijirou felt the air settle like a thick smoke over him, smothering him.

"Are you dumb? I said, get off this planet."

As the days passed, it only got more irritated, pestering him with the same demand over and over again, get off this planet. Today, it was in rare form. Well, sucked to be it, because Eijirou was stuck here, whether the voice liked it or not. Whether Eijirou liked it or not. And, hey! He resented the 'dumb'! With a pout, Eijirou slurped more goop out of his pouch and returned to staring out the windshield.

"Don't fucking ignore me, idiot."

At that, Eijirou's eyebrows shot up. He blinked. "Okay, jackass," he murmured, taking another slow slurp.

It was the closest he'd ever come to acknowledging any of the hallucinations out loud, and that should have felt like a bad omen, a harrowing sign that his mind was finally spinning down the drain.

But really, Eijirou wanted nothing more than to bang his head against a wall.

"Fuckin' freeloader," the voice spat.

Eijirou snorted. He wasn't gonna dignify that with a proper response.

･*✧*･

Forty notches. Forty rations of food, gone, along with forty days of water and oxygen intake and forty days of a pulsing red distress light that was starting to feel like it was mocking him. Eijirou's muscles were definitely atrophying, not from lack of gravity — this gravity felt more-or-less like Earth's — but from becoming the human embodiment of a sack of potatoes. All his hard work at the gym back home didn't seem to matter anymore. He leaned back in his pilot seat, watching the stars hang above him, the faintest glow filling the sky as the sun approached to start a new day.

Eijirou's tears had dried a few minutes ago, but his heart still hammered away in his chest, voices from that night's nightmares echoing in his ears. His family and friends crying, begging for him to come home. He let out a yawn, trying his best to keep his eyes open so he wouldn't have to face them again. He couldn't remember the last time he'd had a full night's sleep. Or a full meal packet, for that matter — he'd been eating only half each day for a while now. His stomach rumbled.

The ground rumbled, too, as if in response. There was a rush around him, a pressure in the air that had taken him days to notice, but that now felt familiar. As if on cue, the voice spoke.

"Great. You're still here."

Eijirou didn't jump this time, but frustration ate away at him. He wanted to snap, where the hell else would he be? But acknowledging the voice would just be submitting to his impending insanity, wouldn't it? Eijirou hadn't gone so far off the deep end that he'd lost self-awareness, not yet, but perhaps that was the worst part. Knowing exactly what was happening to him and being utterly unable to stop it.

"You're really annoying, you know that?"

Eijirou groaned. Banged his head against the panel a few times for good measure.

"Not to mention pathetic."

He clenched his teeth.

"Just sitting in that chair all day like a wimp."

Shut up.

"What's your fucking problem, anyway?"

Shut up!

"If you left, maybe I could finally get back to sleep—"

"—If I could, then I would!"

The voice abruptly stopped, and maaaybe Eijirou had said that last bit out loud. Yikes. He slumped back in his chair and brought his knees up to hug them.

"Why the fuck are you even here, then? You're not doing anything, " the voice finally spoke with a scoff. " You so incompetent you forgot to dodge an entire planet?"

"It wasn't an accident! It was my best chance at survival!"

The ground let out another rumble. "Because crash landing on a planet like this was the smart choice."

"When the hydraulics are losing power, then yeah! It was!" And fuck, the voice had really gotten to him this time. "News flash, asshole: hydraulics controls steering. And landing breaks. And landing gears. And if those go, I'm not landing on any planet! And—" Eijirou cut himself off with a breath. Then another, feeling his heart pound away in his chest. Calm down. His next words were quieter. "And, well. I'd hoped that maybe this planet was the one I was looking for." He kicked out at the pilot yoke, watching it push away and jolt back into place with a satisfying thunk. "One that's supposed to have water." He kicked again. "And oxygen." Kick. "But, nooo. I'm just stuck here, with you, waiting for the day my supply runs out. Waiting and hoping that maybe, just maybe, someone's coming to get me." Kick. "So shut the fuck up next time, alright?"

The voice was quiet for a good while after that. Only after a few moments did Eijirou hear a faint "Just get your damn system back online and get the fuck away from here", before the pressure around him faded away.

"Would if I could, buddy," Eijirou huffed into the empty air.

･*✧*･

The voice seemed to watch what it said after that. Sure, it still moaned and groaned, but it lacked its previous bite.

"What if we slingshot you outta here?" it suggested one day.

Eijirou snorted, crossing his ankles over the forty-nine notches on his dash and staring once more at the glow from the lava field in the distance.

"No, you're right... Fucking stupid idea."

"You said it," Eijirou smirked, "not me."

That was how most days went now — it would gripe at Eijirou, they'd exchange half-assed insults for an hour or two. Other days, it might stop by to complain for a few minutes about Eijirou's existence, only to leave to do whatever it was hallucinations did when they were off the air. But occasionally, it would stick around. Eijirou would feel its heavy presence laying thickly over the flight deck — a unique tactile hallucination — with no voice accompanying it. There it would stay, not loud, not hostile, just... curious.

On those days, Eijirou let it be. He wasn't gonna admit that he liked the company, that he liked the distraction it provided. And he sure as hell wasn't gonna be the one to talk first. Then, he really would be insane.

･*✧*･

But sometime in the early morning of notch fifty-seven, Eijirou sat under the stars again, a dream looping in his mind as they so often did. That night's dream had been of Earth crumbling apart at its fault lines and blowing away in the solar winds. The nightmare haunted him, the images of destruction engraved in his mind. But when he'd awoken that night, a gasp strangling his throat and sweat beading on his brow, he'd felt a familiar heaviness in the somber air. The voice was there, with him. And maybe, it would listen.

So, for the first time, Eijirou spoke first.

"When you're a kid, learning about spaceships and astronauts and such, you think, 'Wow, so cool. I wish I could do that'."

His voice echoed around the cabin. The air tensed around him, like 'oh shit, I've been caught', but the presence stayed, its weight pressing down on his shoulders.

"It seems amazing," Eijirou continued, "that other planets exist out there. Ones so much better than your own shithole."

He brought a knee close to his chest, foot on his seat, using his other leg to swivel the pilot chair back and forth. As he idled, his thoughts turned to Earth, the way he remembered it. To chaos and destruction and... well. Eijirou shuddered. He tried not to think about all of that.

Shithole, indeed.

"My planet is dying," his voice wavered, throat dry. "Or maybe it's dead by now, I don't know, but going to all those other planets, it seemed too good to be true. And it is. You don't think about the risks. The things that could go wrong."

His thoughts turned to his friends and family, dying on that shithole planet and still worrying about him more than they worried about themselves. His heart ached. He was spiraling, spiraling down and down and down and he didn't know how to stop it.

"I want to go back," his voice cracked. "Believe me, I want me to be off this planet just as much as you do. But what would be the point?" He brought his hand up to the cracked monitor on the control panel. Flicked it. Nothing. He let out a cynical sort of laugh. "Don't know how long it's been. Don't know if Earth is even around anymore."

"Earth."

For the first time in weeks, Eijirou jumped at the voice. "Yeah," he blinked. "Earth. That's where I'm from. It's gotta be super far away." He looked up at the unfamiliar constellations above — maybe one of them was his sun — before returning his gaze to the lava field with a snort. "It may be a shithole, but it's still loads better than this dusty asscrack of a planet."

The air bristled around him.

"The fuck did you just say?"

･*✧*･

The voice stayed with him more often than not after that, its heavy presence a regular feature in the ship. Eijirou welcomed it. Sure, the voice wasn't real, but it didn't yell at him to leave anymore. Its company kept his other hallucinations at bay. Its banter distracted him from his hunger and thirst on days he couldn't bear to down another mouthful. It made him feel a little bit less alone.

･*✧*･

Some days were good. Good days looked like Eijirou eating a whole food pouch and feeling relief from his hunger. He could drink water and not feel dread as his jugs emptied. His hallucinations were pleasant, neutral, or non-existent. He could smile at the voice's antics and allow it to distract him.

Some days were bad. Most days were bad. Those days, Eijirou didn't move from his cot at all. Not for food or water or anything, too obsessed with how much was left and how long it would last him. His hallucinations were at their worst — hostile shapes dancing around his field of vision leaving him cowering, covering his face with his hands, screaming until he was dry-heaving. His mom and friends shouting at him, asking him why he forgot about them, telling him that he was too late, Earth was gone and everyone was dead and it was all his fault and if anyone deserved to die it was him because he was so stupid, and so useless, and he was sorry, he was so sorry—

... Well. Today was a bad day.

Seventy-six notches. Seventy-six days of dwindling supplies, unchanging landscape, ever-growing hunger and thirst, and Eijirou had never felt more hopeless.

But the voice was there. It hadn't spoken yet that day — it was still early morning, after all, the faint glow on the horizon brightening through the portholes and flight deck windshield — but Eijirou could feel its presence around him. When the shouts of his friends and family finally quieted down, he uncurled himself, sat up on his cot, and wiped the tears from his face.

"No one's coming to get me, are they?"

The air around him was silent, as if holding its breath. Listening. But for now, Eijirou had nothing else to say.

He really was going to die here. He was going to slip away until he was a husk of himself, cells shriveled up or stomach empty or mouth gasping for oxygen that was no longer there. Away from his family, his friends, who were all probably long gone anyways, prayers of a new world on their dying breaths. A new world he would never get to show them.

It hit him gently. Not quite acceptance, but not a violent realization either. He'd known this might happen. This was all laid out in his training. His training .

At the thought, words came spitting out.

"They gave each of us a pistol, for fuck's sake," he rasped into the air. "Can you believe that? A pistol." His next words were a whisper. "They really expected us to die out here, didn't they?"

The air tensed, rippled, as if furious. But it didn't respond. And for once , Eijirou wished it would.

"Where'd you go, huh?" he snapped. He scrambled against the thin mattress for purchase as he stood, darting to the flight deck and shouting, "Got nothing to say? Fan-tastic. " He laughed, manic. "Not even my own hallucinations can stand me."

He waited for an insult, a snarky retort, anything, but there was only deafening silence. Eijirou took a shaky breath, steadied himself against the pilot chair.

"Wonder how many of those pistols still have a bullet in them," he said. "Wonder how long mine will, too."

His own words hit him like a slap to the face. A loud bang, an empty chamber. It was one thing to think of it abstractly, with wordless wisps in the back corners of his mind. It was an entirely different thing to say it out loud. And now that the thought was out in the world, it rang around in Eijirou's head endlessly.

"I won't," he whispered. His voice cracked. "I won't. I'm fine. I'm fine."

He said it again, and again, and a couple more times for good measure, anything to make these new words drown out the old ones. His eyes stung, and damn, he really couldn't cry right now, not when his mouth was so parched that he wasn't even sure tears would fall. He slumped down into the pilot seat and covered his face with his hands, don't hyperventilate, don't hyperventilate. Every labored breath was precious air he couldn't afford to waste. He had to stay calm. Just like he'd practiced in training.

"—I'm fine, I'm fine, I'm fine—" As the same two words droned on mindlessly, they took on an almost sing-song quality, a way to fill the space. "—I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine. I'm fine—"

There was a loud thunk on the side of the ship.

Eijirou bolted up in his seat. The air around him felt... light. Empty.

There was another thunk, then more, frantically, almost as if—

As if someone was knocking.

Eijirou jumped out of the seat and bolted to one of the portholes that lined the inside of the ship. He wasn't sure what to expect, his view had been nothing but orange dust and lava and stars for weeks. But when he craned his neck to peer out of the window, he saw a man.

The man wore plain black clothes, with a head of dusty blond hair backlit by the faint light of morning. At the sight, Eijirou froze. Blinked a few times, shook his head to clear it. But when he looked through the glass again, the vision hadn't disappeared. There the man stood outside the hatch of the ship, arms crossed, foot tapping away. Like they weren't on an uninhabitable planet who-knows-how-far away from Earth.

The guy knocked again. Glanced over the ship passively at first, then towards the portholes as if trying to find the one Eijirou was peering out of. Eijirou dropped out of sight, turning to lean his back against the wall, clutching at his racing heart.

Was the guy human? Another hallucination? Holy shit, was this first contact? Possibilities circled around Eijirou's head, making him so lightheaded he felt delusional. Maybe he'd misunderstood the ship's readings before they'd gone kaput, or maybe a rescue crew had found him, maybe his ship had been recalled while he was in cryo and he'd been on Earth all along, maybe...

Maybe this was insanity.

Oh god, he wanted this to be real. He wanted this to be real so bad his heart hurt from thumping too wildly in his ribcage, and his stomach ached and his mouth was dry and maybe that was just the hunger and thirst he felt from rationing his supplies for so long but he was gonna run out of all that stuff eventually and, well. If this was real — if this was somehow real — maybe he would survive.

Eijirou closed his eyes.

Maybe, maybe, maybe.

When the knocking sounded again, Eijirou didn't even think, he just dashed through the inner hatch of the airlock and closed it behind him, pulled the thick EVA suit up his legs, slid his arms into the sleeves and gloves, fastened it up. Clamped the helmet over his head and onto the suit, slung a small oxygen tank pack over his shoulders, screwed it to the intake valve, depressurized the compartment, and for the first time since landing, he heard the hiss of the outer airlock hatch as it slid inward and away. For the first time, he stepped onto the surface, felt the sturdy ground under his feet — hold on, there used to be earthquakes, right? — and then it was just him, the stranger, the toxic air between them, and the big, wide, empty world around them.

The man eyed him for a moment. Then, he hung his head with a sigh. "Fucking hell. You really are stuck here, aren't you?" Amused defeat colored his voice. His familiar, familiar voice.

Eijirou froze, eyes wide. He knew that voice. That voice was...

He snapped his hanging jaw shut and scrambled for his glove's touchscreen, turning on the helmet's mic and speakers. His words tumbled out, his breath coming in short gasps as it tried to keep up.

"But, but, but... What's happening? What's going on? Who are you?" He took a step forward, curious hands reaching out towards the stranger. "Why are you here? How are you here? How can you breathe? I can't breathe—!"

"Yes, you can."

"With all the toxins in the atmosphere?" Eijirou barked out a laugh. Okay, yeah, this was insanity. "No. I can't."

"Yes." With a step, the man closed the gap between them. Eijirou watched, unmoving, mesmerized, as strange fingers landed on his suit, on his helmet, on the clamps that kept it locked on airtight, unfastening them. "You can."

The helmet lifted away with a hiss. Eijirou gasped, taking in air as he did. Its sour taste snapped him out of his stupor. Eyes wide, he pinched his nose and covered his mouth with a gloved hand.

The man huffed, amused. He tossed the helmet to the side, prying at Eijirou's hand with a muttered "Come on, don't be a dumbass, breathe."

Eijirou wasn't sure he wanted to. Wasn't sure he could. It was supposed to be toxic. But he didn't get a good breath before the seal of his helmet broke, and his lungs were already starting to burn. It was only a matter of time before he passed out. He was as good as dead already.

The man tugged Eijirou's hand fully away from his face with a raised eyebrow.

"Breathe, " he said.

So Eijirou did.

Inhalation. Exhalation. Another inhalation. They filled his lungs shakily, like he was dipping his toe into water that was supposed to suck him right under. But he didn't drown. The air kept coming, in, out, and he didn't become dizzy or nauseous. He was simply breathing. Breathing alien air, on an alien planet, and he was alive. Holy fuck. He was alive.

The relief that flooded him was too much all at once. He wanted to cry, his body hunching over and shuddering with every gasp, but his eyes wouldn't let him — they couldn't find the water. The sobs that wracked through his body were dry. As he breathed and breathed and breathed, Eijirou choked on the air and coughed. His knees collapsed from under him.

"Fuck—" the man muttered. Somehow, Eijirou had forgotten he was there. He held onto Eijirou from a distance, as if deciding whether to help keep him upright or to just let him fall, before changing tactics and slowly lowering Eijirou to his knees. He lifted something to Eijirou's lips — a bowl, rustic, formed from stone, filled with—

Eijirou grabbed it and gulped down the water.

"There you go," the man said, helping him lift the bowl to his lips.

Eijirou drank until he felt like he could throw up. When the bowl was pulled away, he wiped at his chin and looked over to the man who was kneeling beside him, studying him. Eijirou stared back, into those red eyes that were so, so similar to his own. The man looked like something Eijirou thought he would never see again. He looked human.

"You're welcome." The man's voice cut through the silence, smug. "What do I call you?"

At that, he found his voice. "Kirishima. Kirishima Eijirou. Who are you?" he asked. What are you?

"I'm Bakugou." The man's face broke into a wicked smile. "And I'm how you're gonna survive."

･*✧*･

Bakugou had said he'd be back.

Eijirou sat in his pilot seat, watching the sun arch above him. The longer the shadows on the ground grew, the more convinced Eijirou became that he'd dreamed the whole thing up. Just like he was imagining his mom's laughter in his ear right then, or his friends whining for study help. He could've hallucinated everything from that very chair.

But uncertainty itched away at him, curiosity, and that evening, Eijirou brought shaky hands to press the button to open the inner airlock hatch. When the door hissed open, Eijirou's heart jumped into his throat. His EVA suit was piled on the ground like dirty laundry. His helmet was strewn to the side. Rust-colored dirt dusted the floor near the outer hatch. He'd left the ship.

As he took stock of his surroundings, there was a firm knock against the airlock.

Eijirou froze for a moment, eyes wide, before grabbing his EVA helmet and freezing again. Did he even need his suit? After that morning? With a shake of his head to steel his nerves, he tossed it aside, pressed the button to equalize the compartment, and opened the outer airlock hatch.

And there was the outside air, fresh and breathable, and there was Bakugou, so very, very real.

"Here," said Bakugou, lifting two jugs between them. Their contents sloshed around. Eijirou crossed the threshold to take them.

That morning, Eijirou had been so focused on air, on water, on surviving, that everything he'd wanted to ask had dissipated in an instant. But now, with Bakugou standing in front of him again, questions bubbled under Eijirou's skin.

The wind swept through his hair. The ground crunched under his boots. The sunset painted the sky in burning golds and oranges and reds. Eijirou hugged one of the jugs to his chest.

"Is this Earth?" he blurted out.

Bakugou raised a single eyebrow. "Does this look like Earth?"

It was spoken like a challenge. Eijirou looked out at the dusty sky, the orange ground. The lava field in the distance. He thought of the dark, moonless nights. No, it didn't look like Earth. At least, not the Earth he knew. He shook his head.

"Good. Your eyes work," Bakugou hummed, and suddenly, Eijirou felt like he was back in the flight deck, hearing that snarky voice in his head again. Bakugou craned his neck to look at the inside of the ship over Eijirou's shoulder, his next words spoken as a lazy afterthought. "Earth's a long way from here."

"So you know it?"

Rather than answer the question, Bakugou shoved past him and entered the airlock. "I need to take a closer look at your food."

Eijirou followed after him and watched, stunned, as Bakugou pressed the button to close the outer airlock hatch, then equalized the compartment, then opened the inner airlock hatch. There was so much he wanted to know, so many questions he needed to ask, but Bakugou just steamrolled ahead, straight towards the galley. Eijirou dropped the jugs of water on the floor of the airlock with a thud and rushed after him, finding him tearing open a meal pouch with his teeth.

"Hey—"

Bakugou waved off Eijirou's protests. He squeezed a pea-sized dollop of the paste onto his finger. Sniffed it. Tasted it. His face scrunched into a grimace. "What's in this?"

"Just... nutrients."

"No shit. What sort of nutrients? And what does it come from?"

"Well, that depends on which food pouch. But they're protein, mostly. Might be eggshell powder. Or tofu! That's made from soybeans."

"Amino acids, got it, what else?"

"Um." Eijirou's eyebrows raised nearly to his hairline. After taking a moment to reorient himself, he racked his brain, trying to remember the nutrition lessons he'd attended as a part of Space Training. "Carbs, mostly from grains I think. And fats, they probably used plant oils for that. Sugars. Vitamins."

"Anything else?"

"Trace minerals, probably."

"Damn. Okay." Bakugou wiped the remaining dab of slop on his pant leg. Then, he ran his other hand through his hair, stressed, like a mechanic who just realized he was missing the one part he needed. "There aren't plants or animals here, so nutrition is gonna be tough for a bit. Be smart about your food for now. I'll figure it out."

Eijirou frowned. In that case, what did Bakugou eat? Where did he live? Where did he come from? Just what was he? Questions raced around his head so loudly, he hardly even registered catching the opened food pouch that Bakugou tossed his way and dumbly following him back into the airlock. It took the hiss of the outer airlock hatch opening to snap Eijirou out of his thoughts, but by that time, Bakugou was already crossing over the threshold.

"Wait!" Eijirou called in a panic. "You're... not human, are you?"

Bakugou froze for a moment, then peered over his shoulder. There was an intensity to his eyes as he searched Eijirou's face, as if trying to gauge a reaction. Finally, he spoke. "No."

Eijirou's eyes widened. It was one thing to suspect it, but it was entirely different to hear it admitted out loud. But he seemed so human. Eijirou looked him up and down. "... Are you sure?"

Bakugou snorted. He turned and went on ahead. "I'll bring more water tomorrow," his voice carried back. "Don't die, or I'll kill you."

Eijirou watched as the man gave a final, lazy wave over his shoulder and walked towards the horizon. He brought the opened food pouch to his upturned lips and slurped.

･*✧*･

After another long night of unrelenting nightmares, Eijirou awoke to the young morning sun with a new drive, a determination to do something, anything. Against all odds, he'd been given a chance. He wasn't gonna let it go to waste.

With a triumphant holler, Eijirou dug the seed pouches out of storage, along with a hand spade and some Petri dishes. After leaving the seeds behind to soak in water, he approached the airlock hatch and hesitated. Whenever he'd opened it before, Bakugou was around. He'd never opened it alone. He took a deep, shaky breath. Pressed the button. Took a step forward. Inhaled. Exhaled.

So far, so good.

The ground was hard, but by kicking at it, he found a patch of land that had enough give, near the desolate trail his ship had left in its wake as it came to a stop. The first few bits of dirt he scraped, he secured in the Petri dishes and darted back to his ship for testing. The pH strips came back slightly alkaline. Not ideal, but he'd make it work. He weighed the other Petri dishes before sliding them into a slot on the research panel — an oven of sorts. Eijirou held his breath and paced the length of the ship as the samples baked and the seeds soaked throughout much of the day.

Soil back on Earth was chock-full of organic matter. Organic matter was important. Not only did it have nutrients, it could also trigger growth hormone production in plants. If dirt from this planet had any organic matter at all, it would burn off and reduce the weight of the samples. But when the samples finally finished baking, the weight of the Petri dishes hadn't changed. So, no organic matter. Just mineral matter. That was fine, Eijirou nodded to himself, trying to ignore the way his stomach sank. Fertilizers used lots of minerals, anyway.

He brought the soaked seeds and a jug of water with him to the same plot of land he'd scouted out before, and he started digging. The water helped soften the unforgiving dirt, but even still, his atrophied arms tired quickly.

After about an hour or so of grueling work in the temperate heat, a shadow fell over him. A foot tapped his thigh, gently. "Dumbass."

"Bakugou!" Eijirou stood up. They had only met twice, but the sight of another person made his breath catch in his throat. He wiped his filthy hands on his pants. "You came back! I could use more water for this."

"Dumbass," Bakugou repeated, watching as Eijirou dirtied his pant legs. He set down the jugs of water by Eijirou's side. "Course I'm back. What the hell are you doing?"

"I'm gardening! You said there'd be trouble getting me food, but I have seeds, so I figured I'd give it a shot."

Bakugou blinked at him. "Seeds," he said.

"Yup!"

"From Earth?"

"Now look who's asking stupid questions."

"Can I see?"

Eijirou raised an eyebrow. Bakugou had just taken the tease? No backlash or anything? But sure enough, Bakugou just stood there, transfixed by the brown radish seeds in Eijirou's open palm. So Eijirou showed him the seeds and the rows he'd started planting. Japanese radishes, potatoes, cabbage, broccoli, tomatoes.

"There's a lot of genetic variation in these seeds, to give them the greatest chance at survival in a new environment. I honestly don't know what'll grow here, though." Eijirou looked at the dusty sky. "Will there be too much sunlight? Not enough? I wonder what the seasons are like."

Bakugou hadn't taken his eyes off of the seeds in his hand. "How do they work? What do they need to grow?"

Jeez, Bakugou's curiosity was insatiable. Eijirou didn't claim to be an expert on this sort of thing, but he was as good as Bakugou was going to get, so he launched into what he remembered from his biology and botany courses in Space Training. Xylem, phloem, meristems, chloroplasts, the cycles of photosynthesis. How the sunlight is turned into a plant's energy source, ATP. How ATP takes water from the roots and carbon dioxide from the leaves to make glucose, their food.

"But the process makes some extra oxygen that the plants don't use," he explained. "It's like a byproduct. They release it back into the atmosphere, and we breathe it in. Circle of life."

Bakugou held a seed up between his thumb and forefinger to examine it. "So carbon dioxide, water, sunlight?"

"And maybe some fertilizer."

"What's in that?" Bakugou crouched to the ground, running his hands over the dirt. "Nitrogen?"

"I think so. Phosphorus. Calcium, iron maybe. Oh, potassium! Like from a banana." Eijirou mentally kicked himself. Bakugou wouldn't know what a banana was. But then again, Bakugou seemed to know an awful lot. The way he'd just casually dropped amino acids into the conversation the day before still made Eijirou's head spin. "And I could use some sulfur to increase the acidity."

Bakugou grunted in response, pressing his hand against the ground. After a moment, he nodded his head again. "They'll grow."

"How can you be sure—?"

"—They'll grow."

Ah, optimism. Eijirou sure missed it. He gave a weak smile. "You think so?"

"I know so."

"Oh." Eijirou wasn't sure he could trust such unbridled confidence, especially when he wasn't feeling it himself, so he just added a lame "That's good".

He knelt beside Bakugou and picked up the gardening spade again. He let the conversation peter out, spending a few moments breaking up the dirt. Bakugou watched his hands work, curious.

"You know," Eijirou hummed, "for a while, I thought you were a hallucination."

"No wonder you didn't wanna take off that stupid helmet of yours yesterday."

"No." Eijirou pressed a radish seed into the hole he'd made, then gently patted dirt on top of it. "Before that. When you were just a voice."

For a moment, he kept patting at the dirt. But when it became clear that Bakugou wasn't responding, he risked a look in the other man's direction. Bakugou just stared back, expression unreadable.

Eijirou dropped his gaze and patted the ground a few more times with a pout. "You were really rude at first, you know that?"

"Well, you never responded!" Bakugou spat out accusingly.

"Respond? Are you kidding?" Eijirou barked out a laugh, "Why would I respond? I thought I was going insane!"

Bakugou went quiet again, so Eijirou risked another glance. Bakugou's averted eyes were now fixed on the dirt breaking under Eijirou's spade. When he finally spoke, his words were low. Quiet.

"I didn't think you could hear me."

Shame colored his otherwise flat voice, and Eijirou couldn't help the small smile that pulled on his lips. It wasn't exactly an apology, but at least Bakugou hadn't meant to do harm. And he seemed to be kicking himself pretty hard about it, too. There was no need for that.

Eijirou stabbed the ground a bit more before letting out a sigh. "Ugh, my arms are tired," he whined, holding out the handle of his spade. "Why don't you take over for a bit?"

Bakugou blinked down at the spade, surprised, before gingerly taking it into his hands. He seemed to recognize the offer for what it was — a way to make amends. Not that Eijirou needed him to, Bakugou had done more than enough for him already. But maybe Bakugou needed to. After some brief instructions, he began digging.

Eijirou sat back, leaning on his palms, watching Bakugou work. He still had questions. Disembodied voice? What was up with that? Had to be some alien thing. He'd ask about it later. As far as he could guess, Bakugou was stuck there, just like he was. And if they were both stuck here, then they had all the time in the universe.

･*✧*･

As days passed, Eijirou found a new normal.

Bakugou brought back a few jugs of water every morning, and slowly, the ship's water canisters filled. Eijirou could drink freely. He could bathe, finally, and brush his teeth. He could wash his clothes, hang them to dry on a cord he'd tied between his ship and a spike in the ground. He could water his garden — twice a day, if Bakugou made two runs. After a few days of Bakugou dodging questions about where he got the water, Eijirou decided he didn't even care.

Bakugou usually stuck around to help with the gardening. Some days, they chatted the day away, comparing notes on biology, or botany, or ecology, chemistry, physics. Other days, Eijirou talked about his family and friends, and Bakugou kept quiet, only jabbing in with a snarky comment every once in a while, otherwise content to listen while the two of them worked. Some days, Eijirou kept quiet, too, either too obsessed with looking for signs of growth in the dirt or too shaken by a recent nightmare to talk much. On days he got like that, Bakugou never pushed.

Whenever they wrapped up the evening's gardening, Bakugou would pick up a couple empty jugs, wish Eijirou well with a flat "Don't die, or I'll kill you", and he'd disappear over the dusty horizon. Eijirou had long given up asking where he went.

The hallucinations and nightmares never went away completely. There was always some empty time during the night when there was nothing to stimulate his brain enough to ward them off. But as time passed, they were less frequent, less aggressive. As for the voice, however...

Somehow, the voice had been Bakugou. Eijirou knew that much, had figured it out the moment he'd heard Bakugou speak that fateful day he'd first ventured out onto the surface of the planet. Now that Bakugou had shown his face, maybe he didn't feel the need to talk through whatever alien telepathy or incorporeal form he'd used before. Whatever the reason, his voice stayed quiet.

But some nights, when Eijirou woke up with a shout caught in his throat and with tears leaving damp trails down his face, blubbering about how scared he was and how he missed home so much it hurt, the air became heavy. The voice was there. Bakugou was there, his familiar presence watching over Eijirou, pressing gently onto him until his whimpering words faded into sleep.

･*✧*･

As the two of them walked to the garden on the morning of notch eighty-five, rusty ground crunching under their feet, Bakugou finally asked, "So, why are you here?"

Took him long enough. Eijirou had figured it was only a matter of time before Bakugou started asking that sort of question, but damn, he'd been dreading it. So instead, Eijirou shrugged. "I told you. My hydraulics were faulty."

"No, why are you way out here? I didn't even know you humans had figured out how to leave Earth."

"Well, that's kinda a recent thing, finding habitable planets and all that," Eijirou explained. "My ship was on autopilot, locked onto a planet that met our criteria. I was supposed to stay in cryosleep until the ship landed itself and ran some tests to confirm that the planet was habitable. Then, it would wake me up, and I'd have enough food and water to survive until the first harvest."

Bakugou frowned. "What if your ship landed on the right planet, but found it uninhabitable anyway?"

"Then I wouldn't have woken up. And maybe, tons of years of technological improvements later, someone would've come and saved me."

"'Maybe'," Bakugou repeated. The word sounded sharp on his tongue. "So, there was a chance you would've never woken up."

Eijirou gave another weak shrug.

Back then, just before launch, when the glass of his cryochamber frosted over and his vision faded to black, he'd known what he was in for, had known his mission was more likely to fail than succeed. Heroism, they'd called it — but really, it was suicide. And still, he hadn't backed out. What sort of person did that make him?

The uncomfortable silence clung to them like tar for the rest of their walk. When they arrived at the garden, Eijirou set down the water jugs and clapped his hands together.

"Anyways, you know the rest," he said. "My hydraulics were fucked, so my ship woke me up mid-flight to fix it. There wasn't anything I could do, but luckily, there was a terrestrial planet on my radar, and... I dunno. I guess I hoped it was the right one. So, I landed."

"Crash-landed."

"Hey," Eijirou gave a pointed look. Then, he lowered to his knees to inspect the garden.

"Why are you guys looking for habitable planets, anyways?" Bakugou asked above him, but his words were faint, crowded out by the anxious pulse now rushing in Eijirou's ears.

Not a single sprout.

"Dammit." Eijirou fell back onto his rear and let out a whine. "Dammit, dammit, dammit. Shelter, water, air, it's all here. Food's the last piece of the puzzle, the last thing I need to survive, and it's so close I can taste it. I'd hoped today would be the day, but..."

"Oi," Bakugou tapped at his thigh with his foot. "Quit your damn worrying."

"Yeah, but—"

"Kirishima."

Bakugou's voice was firm, but gentle. Eijirou looked up to him, raising his hand like a visor to shield his eyes from the rising sun, shining golden in Bakugou's hair.

"Trust me," Bakugou said.

And Eijirou realized he did.

･*✧*･

Sure enough, on the evening of notch eighty-eight as the two of them approached the garden side by side, water jugs in hand and playful bickering in the air, Eijirou spotted little specks of green among the rusty dirt. With a gasp, he darted ahead.

There they were, tiny little sprouts in a neat little line. Eijirou knelt down beside them, careful to leave the rows undisturbed. He barely registered Bakugou's approach until a water jug hit the ground beside him.

"Come look!" Eijirou waved him closer.

Bakugou crouched beside him, eyes wide in wonder. He reached out slowly, as if compelled to touch the plants, but then he pulled his hand back, unsure. "Which ones are those?" He finally asked, pointing at them instead.

"The little radishes. They sprout the fastest." As Eijirou leaned down to inspect a heart-shaped leaf, it struck him all at once. It was working. His tear ducts stung. "My mom couldn't even get these to grow back home." He rubbed his eyes. " Fuck ."

"You couldn't grow these on Earth?"

Eijirou shook his head. "Not in home gardens, at least. We used to be able to, but food's been grown in greenhouses for decades, and even that wasn't gonna be sustainable with everything else going to shit, too, and..." Eijirou trailed off, then shook his head some more to clear it. Don't think about it. Don't.

Bakugou's eyebrows creased. He turned back to the sprouts. "How long until they make food?"

"Less than a month for these guys. That's about thirty Earth days. God, I can't get my hopes up, not until I'm holding cute little radishes in my hands. But..." Eijirou let his words trail off.

He couldn't help it — he did feel hope. It burrowed in his heart, making a home there, kicking out the part of himself that, only a few short weeks ago, had wanted to just take the gun and give up already. He could feel a smile creep on his face, bigger and bigger until his cheeks ached. He let out a triumphant shout, fists pumping the air as he laughed and hooted and hollered until he was breathless and heaving.

Spent, he leaned back on his palms and settled comfortably under Bakugou's gaze. He watched it search, trailing across his face, across his goofy grin and flushed cheeks before finally meeting his eyes. Bakugou's expression was open, more than Eijirou had ever seen it, eyes wide, lips parted, the grumpy wrinkles in his brow smoothed over, and for a moment, Eijirou wondered what Bakugou saw when he looked at him like that.

"Thank you," Eijirou said.

At that, Bakugou blinked. Then with a scowl, he ducked his head to observe the sprouts. Eijirou threw his head back and laughed some more.

The two of them set to work as usual. Bakugou finished his watering before the sun set, but instead of heading out when his rows were done, he waited for Eijirou to finish his half of the garden. Bakugou picked up empty jugs like normal, but instead of walking away with his usual " Don't die, or I'll kill you ", he quietly stuck by Eijirou's side.

Eijirou could always use the company, so he gave Bakugou another smile and babbled away as he led Bakugou back to the ship. But the whole way, concern scratched at the back of his mind. Bakugou was many things — grumpy, smart, mysterious, amazing — but subtle was certainly not one of them. What did he want?

The airlock doors closed behind them, and they set their empty jugs down. Bakugou's voice filled the space.

"What happened to Earth?"

At the words, a black hole opened wide in Eijirou's stomach, sucking everything in. His heartbeat roared in his ears. He swallowed, thickly. "I'm not sure I can..."

"Kirishima, I need to know."

Bakugou took Eijirou's hands in his own, squeezed them in what felt like reassurance, and Eijirou's brain short-circuited. He turned his burning face away, screwed his eyes shut. The first skin-on-skin contact he'd felt in literal months, and it was so much, all at once. He yearned for it, wanted to lean into it, wanted to push it far away. It was comfort and relief and dread, suffocating him from all sides. Bakugou didn't know what that gesture could mean, didn't know how it made him feel—

"Don't—"

At Eijirou's flinch, Bakugou froze, dropped his hands away, and finally, Eijirou could breathe again.

He'd have to come to terms with everything at some point. He knew that. But dammit, did it have to be so soon?

The two stood in the airlock for a moment, averting their eyes, waiting for something to happen. Some sort of a distraction from the way the conversation had turned sour.

So, Eijirou sighed. "I'm hungry. Why don't you stick around for dinner?"

"I don't eat that gooey crap."

Eijirou raised an eyebrow. As far as he could tell, Bakugou didn't eat at all. After a moment, he shrugged, a tight smile on his lips. "Great, more for me." He gestured to the inside of the ship with a tilt of his head.

After considering the offer for a moment, Bakugou nodded.

Eijirou grabbed one of the few remaining food pouches from the kitchen galley and climbed onto his cot, sitting crisscrossed with his back against the wall at the head of the bed. He patted the mattress in front of him with his foot, inviting Bakugou to take a seat opposite him, against the wall at the foot of the bed.

"This stuff isn't so bad," Eijirou said after a few slurps, watching as Bakugou made himself comfortable. "You sure you don't want any?"

Bakugou wrinkled his nose at the offer. Eijirou snorted.

He told Bakugou about the plants they were growing, which ones would sprout next, what they looked like, what they tasted like, their nutrients, how to prepare them.

"Radishes can be eaten raw," he explained. "They don't taste like much, maybe a little spicy. Nice crunch. Lots of veggies can be cooked, too, there's a microwave in the galley..."

The conversation stayed safe. Bakugou hung onto every word, listening and learning and asking and sometimes finishing Eijirou's answers for him. But as Eijirou took the last slurps of his food and tossed the pouch away, the conversation lulled again, the silence oppressive.

Eijirou knew he should talk about it. Should face it all before it ate away at him like the silent killer it was. For a moment, he wondered what Bakugou would think of him if he knew. The coil deep in his stomach clenched at the thought. He took a deep breath and pushed through, anyway.

"It really started when we found fossil fuels."

Bakugou's eyes met his in an instant, piercing. Eijirou swallowed the lump in his throat and continued.

"There was this oil in the ground, and we burned it to run our technology. But it released nitrous oxides into the atmosphere. Other sources of energy like coal and wood weren't much better, they just released carbon dioxide. The companies that sold the fuel bought our governments out and stopped research into cleaner energy, so billions of us relied on that filth. There were tons of it getting pumped into our atmosphere every second, over centuries, faster than our plants could process it, and—"

"— and your atmosphere got warmer and warmer," Bakugou finished, understanding dawning. He'd always caught on to that sort of thing quickly. "Your air became more difficult to breathe. Hotter oceans would ruin aquatic ecosystems, change the shoreline, melt the poles, which would add even more water into the water cycle, producing even more violent weather patterns... Shit ." He let out a puff of air and shook his head. "Total ecological collapse."

Eijirou nodded tensely as shame settled deep in his gut. "We were past that point. Only a few centuries before mass extinction. We knew it was happening and we let it happen anyways, like the fucking dumbasses we are.

"There's more," he said quickly, cutting off Bakugou, who had opened his mouth to speak. Eijirou couldn't let himself hear reassurance, not then, not when he was revealing the worst in mankind. "Earth became more volcanic, too," he continued. "Tons of active volcanoes spewing even more crap into the atmosphere. Sometimes, there was enough to cool down the planet, or at least a region of it, but then it'd block out the sun and our crops died anyway. The tectonic plates started shifting too much. Earthquakes toppled cities. We don't even know why all that started happening, it just did. People had to move away from the equator, the shorelines, the fault lines. Too many refugees to count, with nowhere to go. Enough land, but too much greed. Governments shut their borders." Eijirou took a deep breath to settle his thrumming heart. His next words shook. "There were wars about it, nuclear ones."

"Nuclear?"

"They'd split an atom, just to make a point."

Bakugou's eyes widened. As if he knew exactly what that meant. He took a sharp breath. "Holy fuck."

Eijirou lowered his gaze with a nod. He couldn't bear to look at Bakugou anymore.

"I came after all that, in what was left after the dust settled. We have a world government now, but they know they couldn't save everyone, so they don't even try. Instead, they focused on saving some of humanity in the long run, even if that meant leaving millions to die in the present. Sounds stupid, doesn't it?" Eijirou choked out. "It's terrible. But we were told it was our best chance as a species. And I was a smart kid, sorta. I got accepted into their space program as a trainee. And then, as a Drifter, to find the next Earth. Which is..." he trailed off and made a broad sort of gesture.

"Which is why you're here," Bakugou finished for him.

Eijirou gave a weak nod. "Wanna know what our leaders called us? 'Humanity's best hope', 'the heroes of mankind'. But the world hated us." His tears fell freely now. "They hated us, and I don't blame them. They looked at us, on our high fucking horses, with our food and our shelter and our education, and they knew that their leaders had given up on them. And maybe I really am as selfish as they said, but, fuck, I was just trying to survive."

He felt uncontained, like parts of himself were leaking everywhere around him, so he pulled up his thin wool blankets and wrapped himself to feel whole.

"And you did survive," Bakugou's voice cut through the air, a relief. He moved to kneel on the mattress in front of Eijirou, arms on his shoulders. "You're here now. Right?"

Eijirou's breath hitched. He nodded.

"No one should blame you for wanting to survive. Understand?"

"But that's another thing," Eijirou wiped at his face. "I'm happy to be here, I am, and I'm so thankful for your help. But I've survived all my life. I'm tired of surviving. I want to live."

No matter how much he wiped his face against his blanket, Eijirou's tears wouldn't stop. Bakugou let him cry, concern painting his face but at a loss of what to do. After a moment, he scooted to stand off of the bed.

"No, no, stay," Eijirou whimpered, circling the blankets around himself even tighter.

"I'm just bringing you water, dumbass, you're losing it too quickly—"

"—Stay, please, I don't want to be alone."

He reached a hand out from under his cocoon of blankets. Bakugou paused for a moment, looking at the hand warily as if he didn't know what to do with it. The way Eijirou had rejected his hands earlier... It was mixed signals, Eijirou knew it, so he didn't blame Bakugou for his hesitance. But he needed someone by his side, he needed Bakugou by his side, anchoring him before he floated away into nothingness. He couldn't pull his hand back, not now. Not when Bakugou was all he had.

With a decisive nod, Bakugou finally settled next to him against the headboard, but it wasn't enough, so Eijirou rested his head on Bakugou's shoulder. Bakugou tensed, but then he reached his hand and took one of Eijirou's into it. Rubbed his thumb into the palm, and Eijirou's heart surged so strongly it felt like it was breaking into pieces all over again. It still wasn't enough, not when he wanted so much more, wanted arms circling around him, wanted to hold and be held, wanted to never let go, wanted, wanted, wanted.

Slowly, his sniffles petered out, his breathing calmed. The ship became quiet, still.

"Tell me more about Earth," Bakugou finally spoke.

Eijirou snorted, wetly. "You know pretty much all there is to know."

"But what about all the good in it, huh?" He asked. "Your mom, your friends, your home. Tell me more about that."

Eijirou thought of his mom's laughter echoing through their small apartment until their neighbors banged on the wall, of the smell of fresh baked goods on the weekends, of the sound of cicadas in his backyard every summer. He thought of his friends and all the trouble they got into, their terrible jokes that made him choke on his spit and spew out whatever he was drinking. In spite of everything, he found himself smiling. Yeah. He could talk about that.

So he shared it with Bakugou. Every detail, every moment he could remember, for what felt like hours. And maybe he would never get Bakugou to understand why such a shitty little planet could make homesickness settle so deeply in Eijirou's bones, but he had to try.

"My hometown was on a big bay," he babbled. "It stormed a lot, the ocean was murky and gross, and there were so many earthquakes and tsunamis that after I joined Space Training, the rest of my family moved away, too. But I liked to play on the beach, picking up shells and sea glass and pretty rocks. Sometimes I'd sit on the edge of the pier with a fishing rod, trying to catch something. Momma told me it'd never work, and she was right, but I liked the sound of the waves. On clear days, you could look across the water from that rickety pier and see the hazy mountains in the distance and it was beautiful. It was home ." He wiped his snot on his soaked blanket. "I would give anything to see it again."

Bakugou's grip on his hand tightened. "You will see it again."

Eijirou felt his smile fall away. If only it were possible.

With a sigh, he scooched down to lay on the small mattress. Bakugou followed suit, and Eijirou buried his face against his chest, allowing Bakugou to hold him tight. And there Eijirou talked, and talked, and talked, until his tears dried and his words trailed away, succumbing to a dreamless sleep.

･*✧*･

When Eijirou awoke with crusty eyes and dry throat to the bright sunlight flitting through the portholes, the spot next to him on the mattress was cold. Vacant. Bakugou was gone.

Eijirou tried to ignore the disappointment that tugged on his heart. Bakugou had probably left to get water. It was about time to tend to the garden, anyway. Eijirou peeled off yesterday's dirty clothes, put on fresh ones he'd brought inside the day before, brushed his teeth and hair. He grabbed a water jug and pressed the airlock button. It opened with a hiss. And Eijirou froze.

Several meters in front of him was water. Lots and lots of water — a lake, a bay perhaps, spreading from his right to his left and into the far distance where, along the opposite shoreline, ran the spine of a small, rusty mountain range, what the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck—

Eijirou's water jug fell to the ground.

For a moment, he just stared. Then he shook his head, blinked a few times, waiting for the hallucination to clear up, but it wouldn't. He couldn't dare think— wouldn't dare hope—

"Bakugou?" he finally whispered.

There was a whoosh of pressure around him, and then footsteps.

"I don't have a moon, so there won't be tides like on Earth," Bakugou's voice was steady beside him. His jaw was set, as if... nervous. "This planet will never be like Earth. But, maybe it can be like home."

Eijirou gaped at him. "This was you?"

Bakugou's gaze swept across the horizon, as if inspecting his handiwork. "This is me."

"I don't understand."

"You need oxygen to breathe? I put atoms of it in the air. You need nitrogen in the soil, potassium, sulfur? I move it to the topsoil where the plants can reach it. You want mountains? I'll build them for you. You want an ocean? I'll fill one. This is my planet, Kirishima," his piercing eyes met Eijirou's. "Before, I helped you survive. Now, you're going to live."

As Eijirou took in the landscape, Bakugou's words processed in his mind slowly, gradually, until all he could think was, oh.

Bakugou wasn't a human. He wasn't a hallucination. He wasn't an alien.

He was a god.

Ohhh.

Bakugou watched him, carefully, clearly waiting for some sort of reaction. But how was Eijirou supposed to react to something like this? Cry? Doubt? Worship? Dogeza right there on the dusty ground? Eijirou looked from Bakugou to the landscape he'd created, then back again, eyes meeting eyes.

It was still just Bakugou. Just the same grumpy, smart, mysterious, amazing Bakugou. What would crying accomplish? What about doubt? Worship? None of it seemed right. None of it seemed like him. And besides, he'd already cried all his tears.

So instead, Eijirou grinned — a wild, manic grin splitting from ear to ear. In one smooth movement, he pulled his tank top over his head and darted ahead, shouting a loud " Woohoo!!! ". He splashed into the sea, trudged over the smooth, downward slope of the rocky shore as the cool water came higher and higher, up to his thighs, then his waist, his chest. He kicked off, letting the water wash over his head, stroking a few times before treading water and turning to face the shore.

"Stop—!" Bakugou was shouting, running after him in a panic with big, splashy steps. "Stop, dumbass, you can't breathe that!"

Eijirou laughed, then swam to meet where Bakugou stood about waist-high. He reached a hand out to take Bakugou's into his own. Bakugou looked down at where their hands met, confused. Eijirou's grin widened.

"Get in here."

He yanked on Bakugou's hand, hard. Yelping, Bakugou toppled onto him with a splash. Eijirou caught him with another laugh, pulled him out deeper, holding him while he treaded water for the both of them. "Like this," he explained, demonstrating, and soon Bakugou followed suit. Even then, they didn't leave each other's arms.

The water was just water. Not salty, not murky or chemically or anything. Eijirou's heart felt full of it, overflowing. He closed his eyes, pressed their foreheads together.

"Bakugou," he breathed. Bakugou, who had helped him time and time again. Bakugou, who cared enough to carve out a little corner of the universe, just for him. Bakugou, who'd given him a reason to hope, a reason to live. "Bakugou."

Bakugou tightened his hold. "Kirishima."

With one more breath, Eijirou took the plunge.

Bakugou's lips were soft against his own. They only touched for a moment before Eijirou slowly pulled back.

Bakugou's eyes were wide open, brows creased. "What was that?"

"That's 'thank you'!" Eijirou beamed. "Thank you," he pressed another kiss to Bakugou's forehead. "Thank you," against his cheek. "Thank you," against the tip of his nose.

He pulled back again to see Bakugou's expression. To see the awe there, the wonder. Slowly, slowly, he met Bakugou's lips, halfway this time.

"Thank you."

･*✧*･

A/N: This fic represents everything I've been up to on my hiatus coming to a head. Finished my psychology, biology, and gender studies degrees, conducted some research on the cognitive and neurological effects of isolation in long-term space travel for NASA, felt those effects first-hand while in quarantine, used quarantine as an opportunity to catch up on all the sci-fi books I'd been putting off these past few years, got married, and finally, finally, amalgamated all I'd learned in these life-changing experiences to write Kiribaku fanfiction. As one does.

I have considered continuing this, but I have a couple of other Kiribaku projects in the works (including a major 2am Knows All Secrets revision!), so those are taking priority! Be sure to follow me on Twitter or Tumblr for updates!

Thank you guys so much for reading! Until next time!
~Unbreakable-Red-Riot