Ro's had a few bad ideas in the course of the past thirty years -- so much so that it would be hard to narrow down a top ten -- but he's very certain this one would be a strong contender for number one. He doesn't do what he wants, much. It's a side effect of signing his life away to a cause at only eighteen years old and learning to have his life dictated by things outside his control and moving around too much to get attached to any one thing.

Maybe that's why the ferocity of this, now, catches him as off guard as it does.

It's too late to pretend it isn't a thing; he's tried, stubbornly, hopelessly, and never quite as much as he should have. It's the sort of thing he should have squashed the moment it popped up, but he hasn't, and by the time he realizes it's become a want, it's far too late.

The risks are too high -- there are no good outcomes for this, whether it be death or a court martial, so he should never even consider it, but...

But things happen.

Terminus, the life he leads, a few near deaths and a few successful ones, it has a way of putting things into perspective. No one makes it out alive, in the end, and he's acutely aware he's one of those people for whom the end will come sooner rather than later. He can't really afford to do this, not with stakes like this, but he wants, enough to be selfish, just this once.

(Considering Cael says yes before he's even done asking the question, maybe he's not the only one who feels that way. But then, he never really doubted that.)

It should have been strange, seeing Cael smackdab in the middle of his childhood home, but all he feels is a comfortable warmth, now, settled into an well-worn armchair, a cup of coffee in hand.

Maybe the strange part is that it isn't.

For all that he worried beforehand, Cael looks at ease, now, a little flustered maybe, beset by Ro's mothers on either side, laden with curious questions, Mahoroban delicacies and embarrassing childhood stories, and Ro watches the scene with an amused smile barely hidden behind his cup of coffee.

Not that he has ever expected anything else; no matter how little sense it should have made, there has been no space of his life that Cael hasn't immediately fit into.

He had found a staggering amount of peace in Cael's company long before they acknowledged that there was anything between them but a hallway and animosity; everything after has simply been a slow and steady slide into where they are now.

Which just so happens to be Mahoroba, with his parents, in the house where he grew up, the very sort of thing that would have been once so entirely, laughably unthinkable that it never would have occurred to him in his wildest dreams, but life takes strange turns that way, sometimes.

In a minute or two, he'll get up and save Cael from an onslaught of enthusiastic curiosity, but for now, he simply enjoys the spectacle and the way it simply feels right, in a way he can't quite put his finger on.

(Of course it does: they both feel like home.)