Grown Men

light.
    “Ox!”
    No response.
    Runt went at him, getting angrier. He shoved Ox. Shoved him again.
    Ox staggered and slipped on the damp live-space floor. Face broken, eyes wet, he fell to a knee hard and his weight shook the habitat. “Human Resources sent you? Was I expendable? Ox.” Runt kept his voice level and approached his cofarmer as if they were having a reasonable conversation, about crop rotation or eel-traps. “The truth now: did HardCell send you to retire me and you changed your mind? What did they do to you? Why come here? Why am I not dead?”
    Ox gripped the bench’s back hard enough to rip it out of the floor. His knuckles went pale with tension as he managed to pull himself to his feet.
    Angry? Afraid?
    Ox wiped his mouth and looked over the live-space without seeing it. He took an open bottle of water from the table and took a sip. Took another. As if deaf and sleepwalking, he walked out the door.
    Runt pursued him out of the habitat into the moonlight.
    His giant trudged toward the black water. The moons sat low still and the sky was pocked with stars.
    “Oks’ayn.”
    Ox stopped. The waves washed and shushed down on the cove. A few bold bee-moths were checking the trees that shaded the habitat.
    “Why help me? Why lie? Did you kill someone back there wherever? Are you hiding? Fucking tell me. Who is it? Who are you?”
    Still facing the waves, Ox shook his head, shook his head again.
    “Am I not your friend?”
    Ox jerked his head sharply. His eyes were hidden in the shadow of his brow. He searched the sand for a moment as if an answer were buried there. Then he pressed both hands against his legs, his face, his chest, and then pressed them at Runt.
    As if Ox trusted Runt with every part of himself. Because they were friends, the best of friends.
    “But you came to retire me.” Runt stuck his jaw out. “Why hide an assassin pack in the wall?”
    Ox closed his mouth and ran his eyes over Runt.
    “Fine! Fuck it. I don’t care . . . Y’hear? I don’t give a speck about that. But—”
    For the first time since he’d arrived in the cargo container, Runt could see Ox struggling with his silence.
    Runt walked to him, and they stood close to the fire pit they’d used only a few days before to grill the eel.
    He almost died .
    “I don’t care about the weapons. I don’t care about HardCell.”
    Ox took a step closer, and then another step, his eyes moving side to side as they scanned Runt’s face.
    “I don’t care about any of that shit. See? I want to ask something, but I don’t know if I should.”
    The big man nodded. Ox stood close now, his arms over his wide chest, the hairs on his forearms scrubbing against his fuzzy pecs. The synthetic skin on his ribs had blended completely. No sign of injury. No evacuation team. No proof of the past two hours but the blood on Runt’s clothes and the weapons on their bed.
    Tell me another lie.
    For an instant, Runt could almost imagine he’d dreamed the whole horrible night. He had forced fate into action. Or all his luck had come home to nest. He was so caught in that fantasy that only Ox’s touch brought him out of it.
    Ox was petting his shoulder the way Runt usually stroked Ox’s during holo-vids. His anxiety shrank to a size that actually fit inside his skin, and his skin stopped feeling like shredded webbing holding three kilos of pissed-off spiders.
    Ask .
    “Why—” Before Runt wasted any words between them, he tried to decide exactly what it was he wanted to know. Runt rummaged around in the events of the past hour and tried to get at the real question.
    “Are you in danger?”
    Ox laughed with grim humor and pointed at Runt as if to say, “From you.” No smile, though.
    “Ox. I need to know this. I only want to know this one thing. You watch the sky sometimes, like you’re waiting. Like you’re not supposed to be here and someone will come.”
    Ox wrinkled his mouth and stuck his chin out, his brow clouded.
    “Were you in danger when you came here?” Runt wouldn’t look away, afraid he’d miss the answer, however it came. “And that’s why you hid your weapons?”
    Why pretend they aren’t his?
    Like the spaceport thief he’d been, Runt kept his eyes glued to Ox for the flicker of a tell. “I don’t need to know everything, but I need to know why you’re afraid. So I can help. Let me be your partner.”
    Ox swallowed and looked at the alien stars, as if reading letters written overhead. He had a secret