Grown Men

here.”
    Ox scootched over a few centimeters. Even at that distance, the bed felt exponentially warmer.
    Again Runt yearned for the soft, sweet-smelling clone wife that his lonely bed deserved, for the litter of kids they’d have in a couple years. He could be patient ’til then. Oh well: you lose some and you lose some more.
    Looking over, Ox’s face softened, his mouth a slender bend of satisfaction revealing a deep dimple under his twinkling eyes in the bluish glow from overhead. The warm smile creased his blunt features and made him ugly-adorable as a bulldog puppy.
    Or not ugly at all.
    The fuck? Runt clamped down on that thought, rolling back to look at the ceiling. Where had that come from? He lay there, watching the seconds tick by on the ceiling clock’s indigo digits, feeling not-alone for the first time since they dumped him on HD10307-E in Andromeda’s hair.
    Ox finally gave in, scooting closer until only a meter separated them. The yeasty musk of him filled the sleep-space. Not unpleasant, but insistently male . With his friend beside him, Runt didn’t feel small anymore. Ox rubbed his head against the pillow, relaxing himself again and burrowing deeper until he slept.
    And after that night, that’s how they slept after working together all day.
    Sharing the sleep-space should have been awkward because Ox was so damn enormous, and because Runt had an orphan’s habit of sliding toward any warm bulk when he was asleep. A little freaky at times, but they were both adults, right?
    Runt knew he snored, but Ox almost seemed to prefer it to silence. Gradually, Runt realized that his cofarmer loved being close to anything that hummed or purred: motors, thunder, ventilation, transport . . . That made some kind of sense: if his parents had been sub-terrain miners, he’d grown up with the seismic drills. Any low rhythmic vibration calmed him like a mechanical lullaby. And sometimes Ox sang, crooning-purring to himself in that subsonic drone that calmed Runt too.
    Most days, Ox was up and washed and dressed before Runt woke, so it hardly affected Runt’s routine. Runt realized Ox remained anxious to protect their individual privacy much as they could. Someone had taught him to be a polite mutant.
    Not miners, surely?
    Sure . . . a couple of mornings, Runt woke up with an eyeful of Ox’s pisshard bobbing in the air above the soft pubes like a fucking telecom post. Odd’s Gods! Forty centimeters it had to be, and eighteen around, nearly big as Runt’s forearm; fat, warm testes hung like tan lemons in the loose hairy sac beneath. Scared the hell out of Runt the first few times he saw it surging over the sheets like a sea beast, but Ox bobbed his head in apology and was quick to cover himself.
    Pretty soon Runt wasn’t even panicked by Ox’s hefty bone anymore. Even soft, it was easily three times bigger than his. And though both of them masturbated, they did so discretely outside the shared quarters. Morning stiffs didn’t matter.
    Overnight, possibilities sprouted underfoot like weeds.
    Ox turned out to be a fucking machine with unbelievable endurance and pain tolerance, which was lucky because for all that bulk, he injured himself almost hourly . With his help, solar panels went up in four hours instead of four days. The giant wasn’t quick to adapt, but he had a knack for thoughtful strategy when he stayed calm.
    By the end of the first week, they’d cleaned the eelbeds properly for the first time in seven months and replanted the seaweed grove that had been picked off by scavengers with Runt working alone. Ox prepped another kilometer stretch of the cove that could take on another species once they branched out from these conger hybrids.
    Two weeks to the day of Ox’s arrival, when Runt brought a few kilos of chopped kudzu-lentil leaves to a new litter of caterpillars, he discovered something by accident, and he discovered it alone.
    Upslope, Ox had another three hectares to fertilize. Runt had come down early to check the terminal for a HardCell purchase order that was two days late and stopped at the hive with the leaves on his way home.
    After spreading damp fistfuls over the pupal trays, he stood in the cool dark watching the bee-moths dozing on the walls. The glare from the doorway hurt his eyes, but crouched in the dim hive and listened to the queen beeping and clicking, he felt himself begin to nod off.
    Just for a minute.
    Runt stretched out on his back on the cool sand. The pale