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The first thing Hugo saw when he stepped out was Dillon’s upside-down face. “Hey, Hugo!” Dillon exclaimed, grabbing onto Hugo and causing both of them spin. “Salut, Dillon!” The rest of the crew disembarked around them, all the members having to maneuver around the spinning duffle bag in Hugo’s hand. Dillon let go of Hugo and reached out to use one of the walls to hold himself still. “I know you’re going to ask. Porter’s over in your guys’s part.” “When is he not?” Hugo smiled fondly. The module Dillon referred to was the International Space Station’s Columbus, where the laboratories were located. Sure enough, when Hugo poked his head in to look, Porter was seated at one of the lab benches, brow creased as he stared resolutely down at a table of data. Hugo took a quick glance around to see if the rest of the lab was empty and set down his bag. Seeing no potentially highly volatile experiments nearby, he kicked his way into the lab and maneuvered his way behind Porter, sticking to the edges so he wouldn’t be noticed. Not that it was particularly difficult given that it’d probably take half the station blowing up to distract him from his work. Hugo wasn’t exactly half the station blowing up, but he was close enough. He kicked away from the back cabinets and used the momentum to wrap himself around Porter, pulling Porter from his seat. Porter did not scream, thank you very much. “Jesus Christ!” Porter flailed, trying to shake off the newly added weight. “Let me go, Dillon!” He stilled when Hugo laughed. “I’m not Dillon, Port.” “Hugo?” Hugo let go of Porter and Porter twirled around so he’d be able to see. “Oui, c’est moi!” Porter made a happy noise and wrapped his arms back around Hugo, who pulled him close. They floated a little now that Porter wasn’t seated. “Are you ready for the next four months?” Hugo nuzzled into Porter’s low ponytail. Microgravity always wreaked havoc on their longer hair, so they’d learned to keep it tied up to avoid the chaos. Hugo hummed softly. “Beyond belief. Couldn’t wait to come back up and see you while I was grounded.” Even though they’d both been back on the Earth at the same time, Porter was stationed in the United States while Hugo was stationed in French Guinea. Hugo was getting some time off after this upcoming research mission, so he was planning on flying across the Atlantic so he could spend it with Porter. They’d been lucky so far and had relatively overlapping times on the ISS, but Hugo and Porter still spent a good amount of the year thousands of miles away from each other. Eventually the duffle bag reached them and banged against Porter’s shin. He glared down at it with something that couldn’t be called anything other than hatred. “Fuck off.” It remained hitting his shin and didn’t float away. “I don’t think it’s going anywhere soon,” Hugo noted. “You’d have to move your leg for that.” “Hell no.” Hugo finally pulled away and lifted his duffle so it’d stop attacking Porter’s leg. “Come on, I need to get settled in.” Porter pouted but that didn’t keep him from taking Hugo’s other hand and pulling him back towards the living quarters. Although space in the ISS was severely limited— the crew’s quarters were barely larger than phone booths— it was more than made up for by the spectacular views, or at least in Hugo’s opinion. Porter finished double-checking his tether and undid the airlock, floating out to where Hugo waited for him. They floated in silence for some minutes, taking in the expanse of blue beneath. “You ever seen this view of home before?” Hugo’s voice filtered through the comms. “Never. Xenobiologists don’t really get to spacewalk,” Porter responded. “’Tis a shame.” Porter leaned back against Hugo, who reached out with one hand to point towards some of the city lights. “You see that? There’s Paris.” “Yeah, I see it!” “Now look a little further down and to the left.” Porter had to squint to see what Hugo pointed at but could eventually make out the smaller patch of lights. “That’s Nantes!” “Really?” “Yup!” They had to wait for a little while, but eventually North America came back into view. “Look over there,” Porter instructed, and Hugo leaned forward to see better. “See, there’s Raleigh, and a little bit West of it is Chapel Hill.” Hugo still had his contacts in, so there was at least some chance of him being able to spot it. He ended up being successful at spotting the tiny cluster of yellow. “I can see it!” Things looked different from space, so they spent the rest of their evening trying to identify major landmarks. And although they failed most of the time, Porter and Hugo both agreed that it was something they’d have to do again. Things were better in space.