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The meal part of ‘formal’ finished about twenty minutes ago with the allocation of the last plates of dessert. Since it’s the middle of term it hasn’t been as raucous as it is sometimes; there’s a tendency for formals at the start to be wild as everyone gathers back together after a holiday, and then again towards the end of term as people blow out before a break. There have been a few ‘boat races’ and drinking game incidents, but nothing too outrageous.
Eventually, the masters and fellows at the high table rise from their seats and leave the dining hall, signalling that the rest of the diners can move around at will and leave if they wish. Over the course of the next ten minutes, I watch as my friends finish their meals, drain the last dregs of their bottles of wine and sway out of the hall to take their gowns back to their rooms before heading to the bar.
I’ve had a great night so far, catching up with friends and laughing as they get increasingly merry. We came up with more and more elaborate ways to 2p each other, forcing a significant downing of wine, or in my case water, and we gossiped about the latest salacious information from the bogsheet.
We head back to our landing and I stash my gown on the back of my door. The others are organising shots in Amir’s room and I wave to them as I leave with a promise to get caught up when I get back later.
I’ve waited all week for a clear night, and with bad weather forecast for the next fortnight I couldn’t afford to waste the opportunity by getting drunk at formal. Rach agreed, and so I am heading to her room to pick her up. I realise when I arrive that our agreement may not have been quite as solid as I had thought.
To begin with I knock on her door, but there’s no answer. I wonder if she hasn’t come up from the hall yet. I try knocking again and there’s a muffled moan from the other side of the door. I knock a third time and call to her that I’m coming in. When I open the door, I find she is sprawled out on her bed, gown and hair as dishevelled as each other and clearly not in a state to go anywhere. I sigh.
“Everything okay in here?” a voice calls from the doorway. Oh god. It’s beautiful Nick. “Yes and no,” I answer. “Rach and I are supposed to go and take our measurements tonight but she seems to have succumbed to the gravitational pull of alcohol instead.” I wince at the rubbish joke, but I hear a soft chuckle from the landing. Even his laugh is captivating.
“Is she decent? I’ll come and help.”
I tell him that would be great. She’s not in too bad a state, mostly very tired and very happy. She garbles at us as we wrestle her out of her gown and into her bed. She tells Nick she is excited about going to the observatory, and I tell her fondly that she’s not going anywhere. Nick fetches her a glass of water and some crackers, placing them on her bedside table. She reaches up and puts a hand to each of our faces. “My Nick and my Charlie…you are THE BEST ones,” she slurs, before slumping back on her pillow and closing her eyes. We smile awkwardly at each other - at least I feel awkward. He really is absolutely stunning. There are constellations in the freckles on his face, and a kindness in his eyes that is threatening to pull me in.
I tear my gaze away and go to draw the curtains. I look ruefully at the clear night sky, a smattering of stars visible despite the light from Rach’s bedside lamp.
“Can you still go?” Nick asks, as I pull the thin fabric across the windows.
“Not tonight. You can’t go up there alone, there have to be at least two people,” I explain, and then, looking at Rach’s dozing form, I add, “and they both have to be sober. Everyone I know went to formal.”
“I’m sober,” Nick says, cheerfully. “Will I do?”
My heart thumps in my chest. “Don’t you have stuff to do?” Ugh. That wasn’t what I meant to say. I meant to say, ‘Oh my gosh, yes please that would be wonderful.’
“I’m just finishing up an essay,” he replies, “but it can wait till I get back. How long will it take, do you think?”
I consider that we have to walk to the science site and get to the roof, then I have to position the telescope, take the images, lock everything up…
“About an hour? Hour and a half tops. Are you sure?” I ask cautiously.
“I’d love to - Rach was telling me all about the project, it sounds really cool!”
“Well, I’m not sure about that. It’s a lot of faff for a few pixels. But that would be amazing, you’re a lifesaver.”
I look back at Rach, she’s laid over on her side and looks to be sleeping comfortably.
“Do you think she’ll be okay?” I ask, not wanting to leave her if there’s any risk.
“Yeah, her MO is to sleep for a couple of hours after formal and then head to the bar. But I’ll text Jamie to come check on her in half an hour.”
I knew that Nick and Rachel were friends. Since we became lab partners at the beginning of term, Rach has been banging on to me about what an amazing guy Nick is, how well we’d get on, and filling me in on his rugby exploits but I’ll admit I let it wash over me, filing him away as: hot-but-likely-an-asshole-rugby-lad.
I’ve seen the college rugby team in the bar; drinking out of shoes, dominating the space in the way that groups of drunk alpha types do, and generally being a nuisance to everyone else while they’re at it. I definitely allowed my thoughts on Nick to be formed by association, and resolved that beautiful Nick might be nice to look at, but that would be all.
I drop a kiss to Rach’s forehead and tell her I’ll see her later, and I close the door behind me.
Nick pops back to his room to get his phone and a jumper, and I wait on the landing, full of trepidation without really understanding why. I reflect on the care he’s shown in making sure Rach is safe and looked after, and I wonder whether I’ve judged him too harshly, from too far away.
We head to ‘The Cobbles’, the main entrance to the college, and out into the night air. It’s refreshing after the alcohol-soaked stuffiness of the dining hall. On the walk down to the science site we talk about Nick’s education degree and the physics module I’m taking as an elective. We move on to extracurricular activities and I tell him about my running and drumming, while he explains that he wasn’t at formal because he has a big university rugby match at the weekend.
He looks interested in everything we see as we make our way through the Physics building. There are two telescopes on the top of the building, but to get to it you have to take the lift to the third floor, walk up the stairs to the fourth floor and then get out onto the roof. He asks a stream of increasingly difficult to answer questions about the posters we pass; exoplanets, black holes, hydrodynamics and general relativity.
Eventually we are up on the roof, and I unlock the door to the telescope housing. Inside there is a small table with a computer and a chair, and then the telescope itself in the centre, with little steps up to the viewer, and to allow you to open the housing to expose the lens to the night sky.
“Sorry, it’s not very spacious,” I say, “why don’t you sit down for a moment while I get set up?”
“Okay. This is so fascinating, Charlie! I want to know everything you’re doing.”
He sounds like an excited schoolchild, and I think about what a great teacher he will be with that infectious enthusiasm. I talk him through the different steps I’m taking; I unclip the catches so that I can open the telescope housing, I climb the small steps to remove the lens cap, I log into the computer and boot up the imaging software.
“So how does it actually work?”
“We have to point the telescope at Saturn, and then take an image using the computer. We label the visible moons on the images and take measurements for their position at the exact date and time. We do that twice a few weeks apart and then put the information into a computer programme that Rach and I are writing, and then it will tell us about the orbits of the moons.”
I fiddle with the position of the telescope until I can see that Saturn is in the centre of the image on the screen.
“Okay I’ve got it. Do you want to have a look?” I climb down, and Nick steps up to the viewer.
“Oh my gosh, Charlie!” He sounds like he’s having a genuine moment of wonder. “It’s amazing…that’s really…I’m actually looking at Saturn in real time? I can see the rings and everything!”
I giggle a little. “I always think it looks a bit like someone put a sticker on the end of the telescope, but yes - that’s it. In the flesh.”
“And it’s how far away?”
“1.5 billion kilometres. On average. Look as long as you like, I’m going to capture the images and then I’ll be done.”
I sit down, working as quickly but methodically as I can to identify the moons and take the images. Titan…Tethys…Dione…Iapetus…Enceladus…etc. I repeat the process for each one, just to make sure I have everything I need, and I save them in a folder with the first set we took a couple of weeks ago.
I’d been absolutely roasting at formal, but now, up on the roof inside the telescope housing, I suddenly realise I am freezing.
“Oh here, you’re shivering. Take my jumper,” Nick offers, backing cautiously down the little steps.
“Oh no, honestly - I’m fine, we won’t be much longer and then I’ll warm up on the walk back.”
“Charlie, I can hear your teeth chattering from here.” He strips off his hoodie, and holds it out to me, earnestly, “Please, take it - I run hot anyway.”
Trying to manoeuvre in the small space and the darkness, I somehow get my head stuck between the hood and the opening. I can hear Nick laughing as he tugs at the hoodie and tries to untangle me. Eventually my head pops through, and I am met with his smiling face, brown eyes darting as he works out how to resolve the messy attire. He unfurls the hood, and smooths down the arms before resting his hands on my shoulders and looking at me. “There.”
The weight of his hands and his gaze is at once soothing and electrifying. My heart races with how close our bodies are to each other. I can feel the warmth radiating from his hoodie and the intensity of his gaze.
“Oh your hair,” he murmurs with a smile, and reaches up to run his fingers through it. The sensation sets a cascade of tingles skittering through my whole body. He rests his hand there for a moment, and I bask in the feeling of his warm hand against my skin. I realise I am staring at his lips.
“Oh sorry, I…okay thanks. Uh…I need to finish the measurements.”
I sit back down, feeling awkward for looking at him like that and I try to push away my musings about what he might be thinking so that I can concentrate.
I feel him place a hand on the back of the chair and lean in slightly over my shoulder to see the screen. In the cold air his breath carries hot and damp to the side of my neck as he speaks.
“Will you show me how it works?”
I explain what I am doing as I finish up, and it helps me to relax again. Even though his face is so close I can make out Cassiopeia on his cheek in the darkness; even though the faint scent of citrus bodywash fills my senses.
“Okay, all done!” I hear my voice squeaking a little. I push the chair back but stumble as I go to stand and Nick catches me with firm hands on my elbows.
“Steady,” he chuckles, and then, “Oh, you’ve still got…” he reaches up to my hair for the second time and gently brushes some stray curls out of my eyes. His hand lingers again and our eyes meet as I lean into his touch. I feel shy, and lower my gaze but I find it falters at his lips and I stare for too long again.
“Sorry, I–”
“Charlie,” he cuts me off, “would…would you kiss me?” I realise I am nodding and bending towards him before he even finishes the sentence.
Our lips meet, brushing gently together at first and then pressing more urgently. I wrap my hands around his waist and tilt my head a little as we kiss in the dark.
We pull apart and Nick looks a little guilty. I worry that he didn’t like it, or he didn’t mean it, or he wishes he could take it back. But it turns to a sheepish grin, and he says “I’ve wanted to do that for ages.”
“Really?” I ask.
“Ever since I saw you at the Jam Night. You were so cool, playing with your band, and then Rach told me all about you. But I always felt too shy to come and talk to you.”
“You?” I start, incredulous, “you were shy about talking to me?”
He nods and smiles. “She said you were really friendly and everything, but I guess I didn’t really know how to start a conversation. You were either with your friends, or on the way to band practice, or I was with the rugby team and I felt like there were vibes.”
I feel a little pang of guilt for lumping Nick in with the rugby lads. “I just can’t get over the idea that the macho, rugby-playing adonis was nervous about talking to the reserved science nerd.”
Nick sucks in a breath and adopts a put-on air of grudging acceptance.
“Well, I guess I’m okay with you calling me an adonis,” he sighs, “but macho isn’t really me.”
I laugh before responding, “And I hope you’re not feeling like I’m that difficult to talk to. Or that cool…I feel like we might have got each other a little wrong,”
Nick wraps his hands around my waist again as I smile up at him and marvel at how badly we misread one another.
“At least we seem to have worked it out now,” he says softly.
I tilt my head up once more and reach to run my fingers through his hair, brushing the fringe from his forehead. I gently pull him back down to my lips and we melt together in another delicious kiss.
When we move apart we look at each other for a long moment, before I say with a sigh that I’d better pack up. I check I’ve saved the last of the files, and set about shutting everything down.
“Can I take one last look?” he asks.
“Sure, but I can bring you another time if there are other things you want to see?”
“I’d really like that,” he replies, stepping up to the eyepiece again. “Beautiful,” he sighs. When I turn around he is looking at me and I feel myself blushing.
I tell him to sit down and behave himself, and then I start packing away; I replace the lens cap and then close and clip the roof, I log out of the software and power down the computer, and the hum of the fan falls silent.
I take Nick by the hands and pull him to his feet, and we steal each other for another kiss before stepping out of the small door and making our way back into the Physics building and down the stairs to the lift. It feels strange to be in the light again, and we sneak glances as we ride to the ground floor. I sign us out of the building, waving goodnight to the security guard, and we come back out into the cool air.
In the soft light emanating from the Physics foyer, Nick takes my hand and pulls me to a stop.
“I had a really great time tonight, Charlie.”
I step to him and cup his beautiful face in my hands.
“I did too,” I tell him, and I lean up on my tiptoes to kiss him, only coming down again when he wraps his arms around me and leans down to meet me and slides his tongue gently into my mouth.
We walk back up the hill on the other side of the road, avoiding the steady stream of post-formal clubbers spilling out of our college. Nick puts his arm around me, and the most wonderful feeling of warmth and belonging washes over me.
I slip my arm around his waist and lean into his shoulder.
“Rach is going to be pissed off,” Nick says. “All those weeks of her talking us up to each other, when all it took was for her to get too sloshed to science.”
I laugh, and say that I think she’s going to be okay with it.
Eventually, we reach the top of the hill and cross the road.
“I should give you your hoodie back before we get back to college,” I say, aware that wearing someone else’s stash is universally-accepted confirmation that two people are together. But he shakes his head and smiles at me. The unspoken promise of more kisses and time together makes my heart thud in my chest.
“People will talk,” I say in a singsong voice as we step through the front doors, back into college and onto The Cobbles. It is filled with groups of revellers coalescing to start the rest of their night out.
“You want to give them something to talk about?” he asks with a cheeky smile. My body fizzes with the memory of his lips on mine and the excitement of new beginnings, but I shake my head.
This is just for us, just for now.
