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Viktor knew their name wasn’t Halley.
The comet was discovered by a Halley, sure, but first observation by a mere human didn’t mean anything much. Not with time like an infinite spread of moments in all directions in space for the comet to exist inside of.
No, Viktor knew their true name.
1986
He’d been standing in an open field to watch the stars and see the flare of the comet streak by when it happened.
Viktor had climbed up the hill behind his mother’s small house. She left the news on the tiny box TV in the living room after dinner, and the news man spoke about Halley’s comet. It’d be soaring over their country tonight. For the first time in 75 years, they said. Viktor’s mind couldn’t even begin to fathom 75 years.
The world had been ancient when the comet last bestowed itself to their skies. Then it traveled deep into space, looping around their shared star and other planets, before somehow finding its way back. The thought was magical to Viktor.
The night had been warm down in the valley their house was nestled into, but wind whipped across the hilltop and sent chills through Viktor’s body. He shuddered and held himself for warmth, hair lifting high into the air like the tall grasses around him until he resigned to tying it back. Still, he waited there, checking the pocket watch he held in his hand. His father’s watch, one of the few things he had from him.
It was 10:32 PM. This was almost the latest he’d ever stayed up. Mother would be mad, except she fell asleep hours ago, exhausted by her shift.
She wouldn’t know, so he probably wouldn’t get in trouble.
Then Halley’s comet came, suddenly there, a blip in the sky, burning a small streak into the dark fabric between the stars.
Viktor couldn’t believe he was seeing it; even though he hadn’t know about the comet until barely an hour ago, it felt like he’d waited his entire life for these moments.
He fell onto the ground and laid back, sprawling out to open himself up entirely to the sky. A million stars burned high above him, and their light seemed to reach down and press him to the earth. And then Halley, cutting through it all, a needle through the stitch-work of space. “You’re beautiful,” he whispered. Truly, Halley was the most beautiful piece of creation he’d ever seen.
So far away, yet he could reach his hand above him and black the view of it out entirely — a facade of control. But no, Viktor was sure Halley was wild and free, and nothing could control them. That was so far from the taut, stern world Viktor knew. It must be wonderful.
That was when the tail of Halley’s comet grew shorter, like it was slowing down. Viktor squinted into the sky, wondering if his eyes were fooling him, perhaps growing tired and weak with the age of the night. He waved his hand before him again, covering Halley, his heart beating harder in his chest as he peaked between his fingers.
Halley was growing larger in size, a ball of light becoming brighter and brighter. Viktor gaped, gasped, awed, his mind still wondering if this was part of the experience of seeing the comet.
He closed his fingers and opened them again. Even larger.
He closed and opened them several more times, mesmerized by the change he witnessed each time, until behind his closed fingers erupted a huge flash followed by a blast of sound. He sat up to see something shoot down from the sky. It cut through the horizon like a knife and plummeted straight into the earth at the bottom of the hill. It’d landed on the side opposite of his mother and neighbors’ houses, fortunately, where instead there was a wide expanse of field that cut down into the harsh, rural woods.
Did Viktor imagine feeling the ground tremble underneath him, or did it actually?
He wasn’t sure; he scrambled to his feet anyway, then nearly tripped back over them as he stumbled down the hill. Whatever had fallen had left a gash in the earth, one that ran deep.
Viktor’s heart pounded. He was terrified but excited; this was like one of those experiences out of his storybooks. The best adventures begin with the wildest, most unexpected encounters!
He tripped at the bottom of the hill and somersaulted once before scraping his knees and launching back into a run. A light emanated from the gash in the ground. What was it?! He was grinning now as he ran.
Then he halted. His heart carried on its hammering uncomfortably, racing for the pace he’d just been flying at and not this frozen and stilted moment.
Something akin to a hand had reached out of the fresh crevice. The crevice was steaming, and the area smelled of roasted earth, a scent Viktor wouldn’t be able to name without smelling it first. Streaks of molted red glowed in the cracks of earth splaying out from the hole.
This had melted the rocks!
Viktor gaped — and then shielded his eyes, for it was so, so bright — as what looked like a human got to their feet. But their skin was molten gold, shining hard against any clear outline, but that face — that face, somehow, was clear against the blinding light. Hypnotic, even. Viktor stared into it, entranced — perhaps, also like his storybooks, he was being hypnotized.
“Are you Halley?” he asked.
The being tilted their head. “Halley?” Viktor gasped. Their mouth didn’t move, but a voice, one that Viktor could only describe as glowing and warm , was inside his head. “I’m not Halley.”
Dumbly, Viktor asked aloud, “Then what’s your name?” He added, “I’m Viktor,” like the admission of his own identity might convince them to give theirs.
The comet blinked, then looked about themself, deciding to ignore Viktor’s question. “Where am I?” They looked up and gasped. “Oh, I fell into a planet’s gravity. I’m supposed to be up there. I should go now.”
The comet braced themself like they were about to launch when Viktor found his control over his limbs and voice and stepped forward. “Wait!”
The comet turned and stared, waiting expectantly. Viktor froze again, no clue what he wanted to say. His mind grabbed for anything. “Did you hear what I said?”
They stared, expression blank and burning. Slowly, they shook their head.
“I said that you’re beautiful.” Viktor’s cheeks went hot. “I mean, I saw you up there, flying. But you’re beautiful now, too.”
The comet’s eyes widened and the whole world seemed to burn a little brighter. Viktor closed his eyes and shielded his face. Then the light smoldered into a deep orange. “Even though I fell?”
Viktor blinked against the stars before his vision. “Especially because you fell.”
“Oh.”
No time seemed to have passed, but suddenly the comet was right before Viktor, leaning over him with curiosity. Viktor’s vision strained against the light and he expected the comet, this close, to be like standing before a raging flame, but he only felt a pleasant warmth, maybe even a chill, like sitting in a patch of sun coming through the window on a cool day.
The comet leaned on one knee, and an arm broke away from the their body. A hand outstretched toward Viktor until a finger was gingerly placed under his chin. This time a chill did run through his body, down his arms and up his spine, tightening his scalp, but he didn’t dare pull away. The comet lifted his face closer to their own. Viktor’s heart fired away. He stared into the eyes of the comet, and beyond their pupils he was sure he glimpsed the vast depths of space. Or maybe it was only as far as the comet had traveled. What was their name? He wanted to know so badly.
“Thank you, Viktor,” the comet said. They leaned forward, and light poured into every centimeter of Viktor’s vision and he was forced to squeeze his eyes shut against it again. “Call me Yuuri,” the comet whispered against his ear.
He moved away, leaving Viktor dazzled and blinking, and Yuuri took several steps back. They smiled at Viktor and it was like a whole other comet charging straight into Viktor’s heart. “See you next time.”
They looked to the sky, took a breath, and blasted off with a scorch to the earth directly underneath where they’d stood moments ago.
Again? Viktor thought as he made his way dazedly up and over the hill, going home. Right, 75 years; a very, very long time.
He wondered at some point on his trek home if he’d imagined the whole thing. Everyone was always going on about the wildness of children’s imaginations — perhaps his was just one of those that had gotten seriously out of hand.
He reached into his pocket to check the time, but his heart sank. His pocket was empty. Trying not to panic, he checked all his pockets, but the watch was gone.
By the time he successfully crept through the house without notice and made it to the bathroom to wash for bed, he’d nearly convinced himself that he was just a foolish kid indeed, dreaming up comet beings and losing treasured possessions. One look in the mirror made him gasp, then quietly shut the light off. When he woke up, it would certainly all have been a dream.
However, his mother exclaimed when she saw him in the morning when he stepped into the kitchen, and that certainly wasn’t a dream.
“Vitya! What happened to your hair? It’s - it’s silver!”
2061
They hit the earth like an atom bomb.
Viktor smiled. There was an ounce of disbelief in his old bones, but for the most part, he was just happy. He’d replayed that night over and over in his mind for many years, until the memory was torn at the edges and folded in the middle. An unreliable account of what it once had been. Despite the hair — which Mother had raved about until the day she died — he often found himself wondering how much he’d made up of that night as a child.
Yet part of him could still feel Yuuri out there, coursing through the twilight of space where the earth couldn’t see.
He’d had a happy life.
There’d been ice skating, championships, fame, but then many years of loneliness. So many of those nights he’d look up to the sky and let his mind traverse the stars back to Yuuri.
When he met his own Yuuri, a human one, he’d been admittedly a little shocked. This Yuuri also tore into his life, like a shower of meteors raining down onto his soul. He loved him. He did, does, would always.
Yuuri the comet stayed buried in his heart, though — like a little piece of space ice from them had chipped off and lodged inside him. So cold it burned hot.
“Viktor.” They stepped from the burning ground left in their wake.
“Yuuri.” He was suddenly self-conscious, a thing that was rare for an old man to be, because he’d been so young and clean when Yuuri first met him. Now he was old, a little hunched, withered. His starlight hair gifted by Yuuri had even lost its shimmer, becoming a bleak gray against his scalp. I never stopped thinking about you, he wanted to say, but his throat choked back the words, fear of rejection rising in him all over again like he’d never stopped being a child.
Yuuri stopped before him again. They matched heights this time. A decade previous and Viktor would’ve stood a little taller. “It’s been moments for me,” Yuuri started. Viktor’s chest panged. “But so many years for you, dear one.” They reached out a hand and took Viktor’s crumpled, frail one. Warm. Oh, how he’d missed that deep, humble warmth. It stretched through him and back into the stardust makeup of his body.
“I-” Viktor coughed and tried again. “I never stopped thinking about you. I’m sorry it had to be so long for me. That I’m this now.” He gestured weakly to himself.
Yuuri lifted their hand and ran warm tendrils of firelight through Viktor’s hair. He wanted to shudder away or be embarrassed, but Yuuri looked at him like he didn’t see the old, weary human he was. “I’m just sorry we don’t have more time.”
Yuuri pressed their forehead to Viktor’s. Viktor’s eyes shut against that familiar radiance, and he breathed in the scent of burning earth and basked in the cool, cosmic touch that came with Yuuri.
The pressure on his forehead removed. When Viktor opened his eyes, Yuuri had taken several steps back and was watching Viktor like they were trying to take every last bit of him in. Oh, no. Viktor wasn’t ready for this part. He’d waited far too long.
“See you next time,” Yuuri said.
The terrible pain his Viktor’s chest came too late — there wouldn’t be a next time! They needed more time now! He wanted to cry out, to reach for Yuuri and grab them by the firelight flare that made up their wrist, but Yuuri was already shooting off into the sky by the time Viktor could even process his thoughts.
Something cold was still in the hand that Yuuri had held. When he held open his palm, tears welled into his eyes that nearly clouded his vision out. It was his father’s watch, looking like the day he’d lost it, but with a few fractals of ice covering the glassy face. Underneath he could still see the time.
The watch had stopped at 10:32.
He watched for the second and last time as his comet left the sky.
∞
Viktor knew their name wasn’t Halley.
He definitely knew.
And now his name isn’t that of the person who discovered him either, but he doesn’t need the world to know that.
The world is in love with the new comet that'd thrown itself into the same orbit path as Halley. An incredible moment in science, researchers cheered, to be alive when a significant and new celestial body takes to life. This new comet and Halley broke in and out of each other’s path, twirling among the stars and taking turns with who leads. The other would catch shards of ice and rock left behind, amalgamating over and over again and giving less of themselves to the stars than if either of them traveled alone.
Everyone says it's romantic that Halley is finally no longer alone: no longer ensnared but their ghostly vigils to the earth twice a human lifetime, while the rest of time is spent spreading a lonely streak of ice through the solar system.
The comets dance through the vacuum of space like they’re seeking a pattern, a perfect harmony of loops and orbits and axles, the perfect trade-off of each other’s star stuff. Each go-around is a little different than the last, like they can’t stop surprising one another.
Earth time fades.
One day there is no one left to observe the comets but themselves, and even then, they soar.