Grown Men

subsonic lullaby heard through limestone.
    Is it outside?
    Runt rolled on top of the throb coming through the bed and the floor. He could feel it more in his skeleton than his eardrums, the vibration nearly but not quite a sound. It couldn’t be a machine because the rumble had a slow melody. He tried to make his eyes and brain focus on the source.
    Oh .
    Ox lay stretched out on the bench, singing under his breath, a bass rumble just above purring. It was the first vocal sound he’d made since arriving on their island. Until that moment, Runt had assumed that a brood farm had cut Ox’s voice box, or that some prison had mutilated him as a punishment. Silence was his only handicap, if it could be called so.
    Runt turned the lamp on low and the deep crooning stopped.
    Ox rolled over and his craggy face popped up above the arm of the bench, red with shame and apology. He looked cramped on the holo-vid seating.
    “That’s nice. Oi! That was nice.”
    Ox patted his chest, his throat and chest pinked, and shook his head once in denial. He looked at the floor.
    “Yes, you. I didn’t know you could do that. You were singing.”
    This time, Ox bobbed his head once and a stubbled smile flickered there for a split second. Content again, he curled on his side and tugged the polyblanket up to his massive pectorals, the fabric snagging on one stiff nipple.
    The singing didn’t resume. Instead, Ox rolled his giant skull on the seat, rubbing his scalp in a soothing scrape that seemed to relax him until he settled.
    Like a big cat.
    Runt felt conscious of the enormous span of unused bed around his compact body . . . the near-meter between the bottom of his feet and the end of the foam pad.
    Don’t.
    Runt sat up in the sleep-space’s dim bluish light from the clock on the ceiling. The sheets were cool and slightly damp. The first of the suns would rise in a few hours.
    Don’t say it.
    Across an acre of chilly, gritty sheets, Runt watched Ox’s blunt fingers uncurling as a doze stole over the strapping body on the other side of the habitat, so huge but so fragile. Seeds of doubt looked for purchase in Runt’s chest.
    On the bench, Ox twitched and curled tighter, his breathing slow and even, his enormous ribcage filling with damp salt air like a gift. He purred lightly with the simple pleasure of filling his lungs. The bench looked rigid and small underneath him.
    Something alien bloomed behind Runt’s ribs and he didn’t recognize his own voice when it rasped the words, “Ox? You cold?”
    Ox didn’t turn to shake his head, but it was a definite no.
      “I mean, it’s a pretty big bed here.” Runt felt stupid, but now that he’d started, he couldn’t figure out how to stop. “That is, if you wanted. That’s all. Warmer, I mean. Nothing funny.” His face felt hot, like he was blushing, but hopefully the blue dimness hid it.
    On the bench across the habitat, Ox turned all of himself over and stared back at Runt from the shadows with glassy eyes. His face looked stiff, almost scared.
    Of what? His fists look as big as my head . Runt propped himself on his elbows so they could see one another.
    “C’mon. If you promise not to piss the sheet, or crush me with your dinosaur cock, I mean . . . Ox?”
    Ox rolled to his knees on the floor, on all fours. His joints cracked. A smile crept over his rugged jaw.
    Runt blinked. For one moment, staring at the open face, he had the uncanny feeling that he knew what young Ox had looked like as a teenager digging in the mines, with speech, still, and more human dimensions.
    Ox stared at him one last time, asking the question with his hard eyes. Those crazy pheromones ghosted in the air between them, but Runt clamped down on the sweet tickle.
    What’s it like to have so much power inside your skin?
    Runt shivered but didn’t blink at the big goon. He nodded once and scooted across, giving Ox plenty of bed to claim.
    Suddenly he felt like an idiot for letting Ox sleep crumpled the past couple nights, and even more ashamed that Ox hadn’t complained. For a moment,Runt felt even smaller than he actually was.
    Ox climbed onto the thick foam pad and clung to the edge as though trying to take up as little space as possible with that humongous body. Even on the broad bed, his feet hung off the end unless he bent his knees.
    “You’ll roll off, shitwit.” Runt tugged him onto the mattress with a hand too stubby to even grip the beefy bicep. “We got acres of mattress