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I still don't know what I'm looking at
'Cause I've never seen anything like this before
Six months after and until Christmas, Shiro hadn’t bothered to put away the rainbow hued lights that adorned the wall behind his bed at the living quarters he had been assigned to in the Galaxy Garrison HQ. The small bulbs were set to a motionless state; the blinking was distracting and vexatious to a nauseating point. Shiro preferred the peaceful stillness to the constant intermittence. It was his room, for God's sake, not a cryptic club downtown.
I have a friend who's an astronomer
And he says he cannot help me
'Cause he doesn't have a clue
There was absolutely no holiday spirit behind the cheap decoration; it was more of a obeisance to the European movies he and Matt had been watching and the indie games they had been playing on their days off - as rare as they were. He could keep telling himself that, sleep-blurred vision giving the whole room the quality of a dream, instead of facing the clear fact that it was just an excuse for him not to sleep in the inevitable darkness of the windowless, underground level dormitory in the L-7 sector.
Back home, in Japan, the buildings grew towards the sky, always striving to reach the clouds. The taller, the better; in comparison, American architects had a tendency to go underground, sink their roots deeper than any other people, the ever-present concepts of "hiding in plain sight" or "the tip of the iceberg". The scheduled echoing steps of the security vigilant in the corridors gave him a sense of claustrophobic paranoia he didn't know he had, the realization that he was surrounded by the crushing weight of nothing but mute earth.
But not tonight.
I think that you must be from outer space--
Maybe from somewhere beyond the stars
Tonight, he mused about little bursts of multicolored light that ripped through the darkness with the pure intent to soothe his weary mind. These catchpenny store-bought lamps were a poor replacement for the living bearer of the lights, for there was no lamp, no sun, no star, no astral body that could compare to the faerie lights in the irises of Keith Kogane. The boy held a whole galaxy in his eyes, and absentmindedly, Shiro reached out to the lights above him as if that'd bring him and the Universe inside the youngster any closer.
All of his life, Shiro had been aiming for the stars. It was his dream to cut through light-years worth of spatial highway and take the next step towards evolution, cross the boundaries of Science and mark his name down in History as the man who bent the edge of the Solar System. He kept his sights and goals in the sky above him, because it was never in question that that was where he was meant to go; but one day, one single day, he deviated his gaze from the heavens to meet the indigo pools that held more than he could possibly imagine, where all the constellations he knew like the palm of his hand and all the others that were yet to be named gathered, much closer than he would've guessed.
It was otherworldly, to say the least, to find the breakthrough of a lifetime in the eyes of his recalcitrant protegee, his beloved friend, brother, maybe more than that .
His mind drifted to nights before, when it was way past curfew and the same bed he laid on was home to one more. Soft music played from one of their smartphones at a low enough volume that no one but them would be able to hear, but loud enough that they'd feel the meaning of the lyrics deep in their core, filling the silence between their eyes and swelling their hearts to the naughty and suggestive content their proximity made the song to be. Keith puffed on a cigarette with the fiery intensity he held for every single action and then extended it towards Shiro, who took it each time with less reluctance, his lips only looking forward to the taste of Keith's saliva over the poisoning tobacco.
Shiro had his back against the headboard, Keith's hair spread across his lap, combed in the direction his long fingers traced. There had been no words, but also no need for them. The faerie lights were on, drowning the bedroom in tones of warm pink. Keith might've blushed when Shiro's hand descended to caress his cheekbone, a tender smile stretching the corners of his mouth when his fingers brushed a bit too close to his lip. That was all it took for the stars to align, for the myths of the constellations to whisper their tales in the back of his head.
In the comfort of each other's sky, they were Perseus and Andromeda, traveling together in the north celestial pole after their liberation. They were Altair and Vega, the cow herder and the weaver, separated by the river of the Milky Way with the sole exception of one night a year and visible exclusively in the mornings of February, just before sunrise. In the clash of a clumsy Marlboro flavored kiss, they were a combination of all the love stories that clustered in the known sky, and Shiro was sure that future stars would be named after them.
Of course, they were merely human - at least Shiro was, because there was no way Keith was from this world with the idiosyncratic way he simply existed - and they were so insignificant in the astral scale of the Universe, tiny bits of debris in the vastness of space. Why would they be the inspiration for the denomination of stars? Their love was eclipsical, a once in a lifetime deal; how many could say the same?
When they parted, breath lost in the intimacy of their tongues, Keith smiled and Shiro might have died just a little, his heart combusting over itself like a black hole.
I think you must be extraterrestrial
'Cause you can open up the heavens for me
With just one smile, just one smile, just one smile
The thick fabric of his grey uniform stuck to his sweaty back like another layer of skin, but only for as long as it took Keith to remove it, the shifting of the sheets mute to his ears as they rearranged themselves on the bed, bodies entangled and clinging to one another like they might fall off the rings of Saturn, orbiting like every moon in the System, masses of stardust, two planets under the gravity of each other, traveling the galaxy to have their names written on the surface of Pluto, and holy shit, this was just a kiss .
"Hey, Shiro?"
What is that sound coming out of your mouth
(Cause I've never heard anything like that before)?
"I think I'm in love with you."
It sounds like a language from another galaxy…