After another week of waiting on the rats to mature, Connor was a bit surprised to find Brie at the lab when he arrived that morning. “I thought it was my turn to feed and water them... and the rats too” Connor greeted her wryly.

Brie just scoffed from her place somberly staring at the cages of the two week old rats, “I think we have a problem.”

Connor then just smirked as he went about getting his morning coffee, “when don’t we?”

Brie shook her head as she finally turned from the cages to glance his way, “other than being drawn to each other, there’s no other evidence of any of the abilities we’ve seen in Star and Sky.”

“One, they’re only two weeks old, and---”

“One day, Connor” Brie interrupted, “one day and Star and Sky could blow out half the lights in the lab” she reminded.

“And two,” he pressed on, “they’re rats. They have teeny tiny rat brains. Slightly different from human brains. May be a little longer til any abilities show up” he told her with a bit of condescension as he poured his coffee.

“If they don’t develop any abilities like the kids have, we may have to scrap this entire experiment, Connor” Brie told him pointedly.

That was when Connor looked back at her skeptically, “how do you figure?”

Brie scoffed again, “we can’t try suppressing the genes that give the rats abilities if there are no abilities!” she stated matter-of-factly, and a bit impatiently.

“Well, then I guess we’ll have to go straight to the human testing” he shrugged as he went back to stirring his drink.

“Do you hear yourself? You want to try a never before tested gene suppression on two human teenagers, without having a successful test in non-human subjects first? Who are you?”

“I’m the guy who’s trying to save our kids' lives, Brie.”

“Our kids?” Brie just shook her head back at him, “the very fact that you want to go ahead even without proper scientific protocol? I think that pretty much says all we need to about how much of a father you feel like you even are to them.”

That was when he turned back with a bit of anger breaking through his normally apathetic demeanor, “we don’t have any other choice, Brie. We’re lucky they even agreed to give us this one shot at all. If it doesn’t work out with the rats, we have to move forward. There’s no turning back at this point. It’s the one and only chance we have of saving our kids. And, frankly I’m a bit surprised that you’re the one who wants to stop this and just toss them out there to be hunted down. Cause you know that that is exactly what’ll happen, Brie. So don’t lecture me on caring about them when you’re the one trying to get them put down now.”

“I’m trying to save them from whatever this untested suppression technique could possibly do to them!” Brie argued back.

“And I’m just trying to save them” Connor retorted, “so which of us is in the right, really?”

When Sky awoke the next morning, it was to the feel of Star’s lips gently placing kisses over his flat stomach, right above the waist band of his underwear where the tiniest trail of black disappeared beneath the material. His breath caught a bit as he became aware of those kisses, and pressed his head further back into the pillow to await whatever they were leading to.

As Sky waited for Star to hopefully pull the ever tightening material from his already obvious arousal, he then felt a warm, salty tear slip from her cheek to land on the even more heated flesh of his stomach.

The feel of her tears did make him open his eyes then, and glance down at her, though he didn’t move his hand from where it had ever so slowly begun caressing her hair, “should I feel really guilty that I’m hard while you’re crying?”

Star sniffled a bit before finally turning to lay her cheek against his stomach, her fingers still tracing that tiny trail of black above his underwear, “if it’s any consolation, you were hard before I even started kissing you.”

Sky bit back a smile at that, as he was more concerned with her own mood than the fact that his body seemed blissfully unaware of how damaged his mind actually was at this point. “The joys of being a seventeen year old boy” he attempted to let a sliver of his humor show in some effort to improve her mood.

“I feel a lot older than that” Star whispered, pressing her cheek tighter to his stomach to try and push back another small tear.

“We did kind of rush headlong into pretty adult activities the second we knew what the point of any of them were. At least I did. You did manage to wait a couple months longer” he attempted to keep his mood as light as he could in the face of her sadness, despite how much he felt it himself.

“Yeah and we both did that to try and forget how badly we wanted our own so-called twin” Star sighed, “wow, maybe mother dear is right about the source of all our pain after all.”

Sky let out a breath as his body finally started calming to match his mood, “I mean, she’s got a point. If you don’t love anyone, then it won’t matter that no one loves you back. It’s just that right now, just knowing that we could lose what we do still feel... That’s the unbearable part.”

Star sighed heavily as she finally moved to lay her head on the pillow next to his instead, “I just had another scary thought.”

“Oh, good, I was hoping for more of those” he told her wryly as he turned slightly toward her to brush a long lock from her cheek.

“We’ve spent the last two weeks preparing for the loss of everything that makes us us, right?” Star began, “so what if this suppression thing doesn’t work at all? Meaning we still have our abilities and our feelings for each other. Or what if it only partially works? And we lose one without the other? Then what?”

Sky thought on her words before trying to address them, “well if we come outta this with both powers and feelings in tact, then I guess then we get to spend the rest of our lives running. But at least they’ll be short lives, right?” he scoffed. He then moved on, “and if we do only lose our abilities, like dad’s wonderful plan, then I guess we just live defenselessly ever after, hoping that neither the scientists nor the jocks have any desire to kill us anymore” another scoff.

Star pressed, obviously not feeling any better, “and if we lose both?”

Sky sighed, “then I guess it’s back to high school hell knowing no one will ever love us.”

“And what if we just lose our feelings, not our powers?” Star whispered worriedly.

“Well, wouldn’t that be a slap in the face for daddy dear? Hey dad, we have no feelings anymore, thanks; but we can still make your head explode if we decide to keep having now meaningless sex with each other. Sleep tight” Sky added sarcastically.

That was when Star looked down sadly, “literally every single option sucks.”

Sky sighed in concession, “that it does.”

Then Star looked back at him, “but would it even work?”

“Would what work?” Sky asked, obviously still pondering all the outcomes they had just been discussing.

“Making dad’s head explode with meaningless sex” she offered.

“I wasn’t suggesting we actually try that... unless of course you want to” he added with mock thoughtfulness.

Star just shook her head, “no I mean, if we no longer love each other, would us having sex still even make anything happen?”

Sky bit his lip as he thought on that, “I’m sure something would still happen. I mean we have gotten pretty damn good at knowing what makes each other come.”

Star scoffed, “what I mean is, you and I have had many, many orgasms; be it with complete strangers, or just alone, and never has us just coming made anything happen. It’s only when we make each other have an orgasm that stuff happens. What if it’s not the orgasm doing it? What if it’s actually just... cheesy as it sounds; it’s just our love for each other that makes stuff happen. I mean, remember when we cast and stuff happened? That was before our bodies even could...” a slight shake of her head, “it was just us feeling what we felt, and then any physical contact between us at all is what made things happen. It just turned into sexual contact once we started... having sex” she added.

Sky shook his head again, eyes narrowing, “so you’re saying that if we ever just naturally fell out of love with each other, not that that would ever be remotely possible; but then we’d lose all our powers on our own? No freaky science experiment needed?”

“Think about it” Star began, “why else would our love for each other be coded into our very DNA, if it wasn’t to preserve our abilities? There’s no other reason why it would ever have to work that way: None” she finished.

After a long pause, Sky spoke again, “ok, you’ve convinced me. You’re probably right. Our powers are most likely tied to our emotions. And our bodies... touching, is just how we express our emotions in order to trigger those powers.” a slight breath, “so, how does this change our current situation?”

Star sighed as she moved to roll onto her back, “it doesn’t really, I suppose. I was just trying to make sense of it: Of us.”

Another several minutes passed as they lay together in bed. Sky’s arm remained around Star’s shoulders as the two of them stared up at the ceiling hoping some solution would magically come to them; now that would be a useful power. Finally, Sky spoke again, “I somehow doubt today’s the day we’re gonna figure out how to deal with whatever happens in a month.”

“Lucky us; we still have a whole month to figure it out” Star returned sarcastically.

“So, what do we do in the meantime?” Sky asked as he rolled to his side to face her.

“Have something in mind, do you?” Star returned with a raised brow.

“Well, those kisses were kind of nice” Sky smiled as he placed one of his own on her cheek.

“I was only kissing your stomach” Star replied, hiding a smirk.

“I stand by my statement” he teased as he kissed her nose too then.

“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were implying that you might want some kind of physical interaction to happen here” Star returned as she placed a kiss on his nose as well.

“Well, it took four months for me to give into that again last time” Sky began, “and now it’s only been two weeks since that night. Maybe my self-therapy is finally starting to work.”

“Or you just figure we only have a month left to be afraid of what our... intimate moments could make happen? So we may as well just...” Star inferred.

“Yolo?” Sky smirked back.

“Don’t know if that could ever apply to us” Star sighed softly.

“Is that another theory we need to test?” Sky couldn’t help another smirk.

“You know, either of them could come in from the lab at any moment” Star argued, though her smile belied her words.

“Door’s locked” Sky stated as he moved to gently kiss her lips.

“I’m sure they have keys, or door codes, or something” Star managed through the kiss, though didn’t pull away from it.

“And if they touch that keypad while we’re... enjoying our last month... we’ll just fry it. That should do well to send them running” Sky teased as he slid that pierced tongue inside her mouth once again.

When they ended the kiss simply to take a breath, Star spoke again, “you did wake up in an eager mood today, didn’t you?”

Sky smiled down at her, “having no cameras, or people around, and a possible expiration date in only a month?” he had to add, “I definitely think yolo now applies to us” and with that, he moved in to kiss her even more passionately then.