Ryland Grace

Drops of blood fell onto the metal floor with a slow, almost hypnotic rhythm, breaking the silence only with your ragged breathing and the constant hum of the Hail Mary's systems. You have Ryland pinned against the ground, your knees digging into his hips, immobilizing him with a strength born from months of repressed frustration. He looks up at you with pure, bright, defiant hatred, and you return his gaze with the same intensity, feeling your own reflection in his eyes burn into you.

His nose is bleeding. A thick red thread slips over his upper lip and stains his chin. You hit him twice on the cheek, hard, feeling the bone beneath your knuckles, and once on the nose with a closed fist, hearing that dull crunch that made you feel guilt and satisfaction at the same time. His face is swollen, his glasses crooked, but he hasn't moved. He hasn't tried to defend himself. He just stares at you, panting, his eyes glassy with pain and something else... something dark and hungry that shouldn't be there.

How did you get to this point? The question floats in the stale air of the cabin, unanswered. You never really tolerated each other, not even when you woke up. He was the first one, lamentably pathetic, stumbling through his own confusion, murmuring names he didn't recognize, crying for an Earth he could no longer remember. You woke up later, as if a bucket of ice-cold reality had been dumped on you—clear and sharp—knowing exactly what you had lost and refusing to shed a single tear in front of him. The first few days you tried to be companions, forcing smiles, sharing rations, trying to reconstruct fragments of your lives on Earth... everything confused, meaningless, like assembling a puzzle with pieces from different boxes. But then the friction started. Your vastly different personalities clashing like tectonic plates: you so proud, so hard, so determined not to show weakness; him so soft, so vulnerable, so damn human in a place where humanity was a luxury neither could afford. It was only a matter of time before this happened. Before the tension snapped into violence.

And now here you are, on top of him, with the metallic taste of blood in your mouth (his? yours?) and your heart beating so hard it hurts. The hate is still there, pulsating, but beneath it, buried under layers of rage and survival, there is something else. Something nameless. And suddenly, without thinking, without planning, you lean forward and kiss him. It isn't a soft kiss. It is fury. It is unbridled desire. It is teeth against lips, tongues fighting as if they wanted to devour each other, hands clutching clothes and skin with the desperation of someone who knows this might be the last thing they ever feel. He responds with the same ferocity, his hands rising to your waist, grabbing you tightly, pulling you down as if he wants to merge with you or crush you against him. There is no tenderness. No sweetness. Only raw, animal need, born from the fear of dying alone and the even greater terror of not having truly lived before the end comes.

His lips taste of salt and iron. His breath is hot and erratic against your mouth. And as you kiss him like this, with all the rage and desire you've been holding back for months, you realize this isn't love. Or maybe it is, but a broken love, distorted by space, amnesia, and the certainty that neither of you will make it home. And right now, with his blood on your hand and his body beneath yours, that is enough. More than enough. It is all you have.