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It was stupid and juvenile, yet it made Rusty’s chest warm all the same.

He tightened his hold on Gem’s biceps and allowed his cheek to rest against Gem’s head.

It shouldn’t have felt this good to be so close to someone, not when physical contact had always been transactional or used as a weapon against him, but Rusty didn’t feel scared.

Okay, that was a lie. Everything about Gem and their weird friendship scared him because having anything of value meant there was a possibility of losing it.

It was why he didn’t invest in relationships or ask for more out of life.

The moment he had something worth keeping, something worth loving, it was ripped away, and he’d lost enough, hadn’t he?

Whoever said that it was better to have loved and lost than to have never loved at all was full of shit.

“I’m so glad you’re here,” Gem murmured, petting the side of his neck, and Rusty’s heart stuttered, then started to sprint.

Self-preservation kicked in, and Rusty pushed Gem—gently—off of him and stood. “Let’s go for a walk.”

“What?” Gem blinked discordantly. “Why? I don’t wanna go anywhere. I wanna sit and mope.”

Taking Walter from Gem’s grasp and setting him on the end of the couch, Rusty offered his hands. “Come on, Gem. Get up.”

“I don’t wanna,” Gem whined, even as he smacked his upper hands into Rusty’s palms.

“Let’s get you out of the house and moving. You’ll feel better.”

“Exercise doesn’t make me feel better,” Gem groused as he let Rusty pull him to his feet. “Unless it’s sex. That’s the only cardio I approve of.”

Rusty rolled his eyes at that. He was fully aware of how much Gem approved of that cardio exercise.

He’d smelled the evidence of it often enough over the summer, soaked into the fabric of Gem’s sheets.

Not that he cared. Gem had every right to fuck whoever he wanted whenever he wanted to fuck them.

Just because the wires in Rusty’s brain were all twisted up when it came to sex didn’t mean he’d begrudge others for freely enjoying it.

Even if smelling other men on Gem’s skin annoyed him on a level he wasn’t willing to investigate.

“Get dressed, and put on your shoes,” he instructed, pushing a bemoaning Gem through the living room and past the partition. He left him standing at his dresser with a mutinous expression and proceeded to clean up the coffee table.

He threw away the tissues Gem had used during his earlier weeping, then piled the dishes from his dinner in the sink.

The noodles Toni must have cooked—because Gem couldn’t cook for shit—sat in the pan on the stove.

Stealing a few bites, Rusty hummed in appreciation of the sweet, spicy sauce as he stowed the leftovers in a container and placed them in the fridge.

By the time Gem emerged, dressed in a pair of shorts and an honest-to-gods sports bra that did annoying things to Rusty’s heart rate, the flat was tidy and the dishes were drying on the rack.

Rusty wiped his hands on the towel as his gaze caught and held on the glittering jewel in Gem’s belly button.

“It’s so hot outside,” Gem accused, like Rusty was responsible for the weather. “And you’re making me go out in it.”

“Like it’s any better in here.” Rusty turned off the kitchen light and headed toward the front door. “You’ll survive. Come on.”

“Did you clean?” Gem asked, but Rusty didn’t bother answering. He waited at the door as Gem slipped on his boots. “You didn’t have to wash my dishes.”

Rusty ignored that too as he led Gem out of the flat and into the thick evening air.

The sun had long since set, and the twin moons were rising as they exited Gem’s building.

In the time Rusty had been inside, the temperature had dropped some, but Gem still grumbled under his breath as they set out.

At first, Rusty had no destination in mind, but eventually, without consciously deciding, he steered them toward The Point.

He hadn’t been back there in a while. It reminded him too much of his mother, of the childhood he’d lost and yearned for still.

But it was quiet and beautiful in its own way, and he hoped maybe it would bring Gem some of the peace it had offered him.

Gem was abnormally still beside him, and his eyes had taken on a glaze that usually meant he was lost inside his head.

Rusty left him to it; silence had never bothered him, and he felt no need to fill it with mindless chatter the way Gem usually did.

So they walked quietly side-by-side, and every now and then, Gem’s lowest hand would brush Rusty’s.

It wasn’t until they passed the first commercial sign for The Point that Gem blinked rapidly, eyes independent of each other, and said, “We’re going to The Point? Why?”

“I go there when I need to think,” Rusty said, adding, “Or when I want to remember,” as a quiet after-thought, more to himself than to Gem. He felt Gem’s many eyes studying him, but he didn’t look up from the cobblestone in front of him.

The older residential homes of typical Lust architecture faded, replaced with fancier, boxier condos in the Pride style. Rough stones gave way to smooth pavement, and porch swings turned to harsh walls and iron gates.

Even after all this time, grief sat heavy in Rusty’s gut as he took in the vacation chalets that had wiped out the shanty town he’d grown up in.

It had been an eye-sore back then, but he would take it over these soulless monstrosities any day.

Especially given how the land had been all but stolen from those who’d already had nothing to their names.

They headed toward the open desert that had been The Point, back then before they’d commercialized it. The actual Lust district tip of the Pentagram, where the homes and streets disappeared, surrendering to the wild. Even the scraggly trees waned, and then it was only sand and dunes and wind.

Now, the biggest, most expensive mansions rose before them. The desert view was the draw, after all. It was what the companies wanted to capitalize on. So they’d come in with their machines and their money, and what they couldn’t buy, they’d flattened .

With the desert in sight, Rusty’s steps faltered, then he came to stop completely, turning to his right.

The house before them was all clean angles and thick glass protected by a fancy gate.

But there’d been trees here once, scraggly ugly things, but Rusty had loved them.

He’d climb up high, to the very top because he’d been small and light, and he’d jump from tree to tree, and it had felt like flying.

He’d raced through the trunks, laughing at the sky as his mother chased after him. “Run, run, run as fast as you can, little kit,” she’d growl playfully, before pouncing and tackling him gently to the sand. “I’ll eat you up, I love you so.”

“She lived here,” he said softly. “ We lived here.”

Gem was eerily still beside him, breaths slow and even. He waited as Rusty swallowed the clog in his throat.

“Our shack was… somewhere here. Further in, when there were trees.” He cleared his throat and nodded. “She lived here, then she died here.”

Carefully, carefully, Gem slipped his lean fingers into Rusty’s. “Show me.”

So he did.

They slunk through the spaces between the condo walls, passing swimming pools and patios and rock gardens.

They snuck past the backyards of strangers who would never appreciate this land and what it had meant to him and those like him.

They’d demolished it, then rebuilt it into prepackaged, more palatable boxes, selling to the highest bidder.

As the artificial grass faded, turning to rougher stalks fighting their way through sandy earth, the remaining trees rose around them.

They were thinner and lonelier than Rusty remembered.

He couldn’t imagine the people who bought or rented the vacation homes walked amongst them often. It made him inexplicably sad .

He slowed, spinning around slowly to get his bearings. Shaking his head, he grunted in frustration. “It’s so different. They destroyed so much. I don’t… I think it was here. Somewhere here.”

With a hum, Gem released Rusty’s hand and drifted lazily through the trees. His many hands danced along their trunks as he closed his eyes and inhaled deeply. It smelled cleaner out here, natural and wild in a way the inner city never could, and Rusty wanted to ask if Gem could smell it.

Had Gem ever come here? Had he ever even seen the desert? He’d grown up in Lust too but always in the city, and back then, this had been a ghetto more than anything. Even middle class Hellians would have avoided it.

Gem stopped several yards away and, without turning around, he said, “It must have been beautiful.”

“Probably not to a lot of people,” Rusty said, scuffing the ground with his paw, “but it was to me.”

“It still is.” Gem turned then, a soft but sad smile on his face. “I’m sorry they took it away.”

His black claws glittered in the thin moonlight fighting through the jagged branches as he reached out and traced a notch in the trunk. “Some of it’s still standing. That has to count for something.”

When Rusty was ready, he exhaled in a rush, then led Gem through the trees to the desert, leaving the home he’d lost long ago behind them.

By now, he was the only one who knew that Ireyna Róisyn had lived here, had loved here, had died here.

No one else cared; she was Lust trash, after all, just like her son.

They followed a sandy path, leaving the trees behind, and then there it was.

The moonlight was brighter, both moons high in the sky, and Gem came to a stop beside him with a soft sound of awe.

Untouched by everything except time, the desert stretched before them.

Dunes swelled in the distance, and somewhere, a night creature warbled.

“It’s breath-taking,” Gem whispered, like speaking louder would break the magic of this place.