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Music blared from the tinny speakers in the car. The 3rd 80s classic in a row despite there being no such theme stated. Kent didn’t enjoy the way the speakers distorted the intended sound of the songs, but it was preferable to the silence that had filled the car for so long.
They were both tired and their conversation had been so stilted that in the end they’d put on the radio and had that fill the silence for them.
The landscape skated past outside. Kent was so rarely anywhere outside of London, and it was refreshing to have been in some proper nature for the day, although the occasion could have been better.
Riley and Mansell had grinned and winked at him when Miles had announced he wasn’t going with Chandler and for Chandler to bring Kent with him instead, but it had been for work so it had really just been an extended drive for the usual murder and grief, and it had emotionally drained them both to the point that they’d both been somewhat concerned with taking the trip back in complete silence and recuperating.
Sitting in comfortable silence with someone was one of Kent’s great joys, but this wasn’t it, and several hours into the return trip with the feeling that he should say something to lighten the mood, but being unable to, he was starting to wish he hadn’t been chosen to go, despite the paid overtime.
The radio stopped suddenly, and Kent looked over to see Chandler’s hand on the button. It moved towards his temple, massaging in circles like he did so often, although there was no smell of tiger balm. Chandler would never do something that required too much concentration while he was driving.
Great. Now there was nothing to alleviate the tension in the air. If Kent knew how to communicate what he was feeling better, he could have asked Chandler about it, but as it was, he didn’t know if there was anything wrong with Chandler, or if it was nothing and he was just tired, or, the thing that his mind kept trying to tell him, if he was mad at Kent for some reason.
He tried to focus on the world outside again, but in the darkening dusk, it was becoming harder to spot the landscape beyond what little was lit up by the car’s headlights.
Another change in noise made him look towards Chandler again. It sounded somewhere between a wheeze and a cough. He only just registered that Chandler was frowning, before they both had to hold on as the car began to stutter and control erratically.
Chandler quickly pulled into the side of the road and turned on the emergency lights.
“What was that?” Kent asked. He didn’t expect an answer and he didn’t get one either.
Chandler had already been on the way of stepping out of the car, when a horrible smell filled the interior, and Kent followed suit, not wanting to breathe in whatever it was.
Kent’s vehicular knowledge started and ended with his vespa, so he wasn’t going to be of any help, and he couldn’t picture Chandler being a wizard with car repairs either, even if he did have a seemingly never-ending font of knowledge.
He saw how Chandler hesitated in front of the hood before turning away with a sigh, phone to his ear to call for roadside assistance.
The road stretched on and on to either side with no sign of any towns or gas stations nearby where they might get help quicker, and on either side of the road dark fields stretched ever onward.
This might very well have set their return time back several hours.
Several hours for Kent’s mind to anxiously analyse every noise or movement Chandler made.
The smell from the car was seeping out to where Kent stood beside it and both of those things together made Kent move across the ditch and sit down in the dewy grass.
It was cool out and a light breeze was blowing through whatever crop was growing in the fields, but it wasn’t cold, and the slight dampness of the ground wasn’t too uncomfortable.
Chandler had finished his conversation. Kent caught that it would be at least an hour until help could arrive, but Chandler didn’t turn to tell him or give him any more information, nor did he seem to question Kent’s choice of place to sit, so Kent figured despite the prolonged time they were in each other’s company, that it would be more of the same and turned away from Chandler to look out across the fields.
The stars were starting to come out, clear and bright. Kent had almost forgotten how many stars you were supposed to be able to see in the night sky, too used to the light pollution in London making it impossible to see much at all.
If he was to be stranded, he supposed this wasn’t the worst place to be. He pulled out his headphones, turned on some music and laid down in the grass so he could better look up at the stars. It was almost relaxing like this, although he did have to brush away bugs from time to time, but the cool night air, music through his own good quality headphones and the pretty sky above him almost made him forget about Chandler’s tenseness.
But Kent was forever incapable of letting go of his worries, and the fact that he might have just gone off to relax and ignore Chandler while there was possibly something really bad going on with him, just replaced his anxiety with guilt.
He was just about to sit up and go talk to Chandler when he saw a shadow out of the corner of his eye and realised that Chandler had walked up beside him.
He turned off his music and removed one earbud just in case Chandler was trying to come into contact with him, but for the time being, Chandler was just silently standing next to him, looking up at the sky as well.
“It’s strange to think that the light we see has travelled for millions of years. Some of the stars we see might have already gone out. It’s a bit like time travel in that aspect,” Chandler remarked out of nowhere.
Kent moved to lean on his elbows.
“Yeah,” he replied.
“Are you happy on the team, Kent?” Chandler asked blindsiding Kent completely.
“I- yes, sir,” he replied, anxiety telling him that Chandler had chosen the weirdest place to fire him.
“Do you not dream of anything more?”
Chandler was still avoiding looking at him, just staring up at the stars.
“Well yes, sometimes. Doesn’t anyone?”
“If you could travel back in time, would you have chosen the promotion?”
“The- who told you about that?” Kent asked, despite there only being one likely candidate.
“It wasn’t Miles, although when I brought it up with him it was clear that he knew something already. He wouldn’t discuss it with me though, said to take you on the trip and ask you then. I’ve been trying to work up the courage all day.”
“Then how?” Kent said, only slightly reassured that Miles hadn’t told on him.
“I was at a police function the other day, someone from the West End section asked about you and it came up that you’d been offered a role as sergeant, but you denied. It was right after the Kray case too. Why didn’t you take it?”
Kent tried to push down the feeling that he’d been exposed somehow. He couldn’t tell the whole truth, but he could tell part of it.
“I like the team. I didn’t want to leave.”
“Even after- I didn’t keep you back, did I?”
Kent startled, but luckily Chandler didn’t notice, still looking out across the universe.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“I was so harsh on you. I hope you didn’t feel like you needed to stay so you could prove yourself to me, or is that too self-centred of me to think that was the case?”
“Uh-“ Kent tried to find the right words. “Well, I definitely didn’t stay just so I could prove myself to you.” I stayed cause I couldn’t leave you, he added silently.
Chandler let out a sigh of relief and looked down at Kent for a brief moment, visibly less tense.
“Then I’m sorry for making it weird. You have so much talent and potential, I just didn’t want you to limit yourself, but you’re happy with the team?”
“I am. Besides, Miles is bound to go on retirement at some point.”
“I wouldn’t be so sure.”
Kent let out a chuckle at that, and then they were back to their previous silence.
There wasn’t really anywhere to take the conversation from there, but now it seemed rude to block Chandler out with music again, so Kent just laid back down and watched the stars and Chandler’s silhouette above him in equal amounts.
Insects chirped and chittered around them. A bat fluttered above. The wind rustled through the field. It was almost a comfortable silence. Almost.
“Venus is beautiful tonight,” Chandler said, clearly also feeling that the comfortable silence wasn’t entirely there.
Kent scanned the sky trying to figure out which light belonged to Venus. “If you say so,” he eventually conceded.
“It’s that one,” Chandler pointed, but it was hard to tell the direction from Kent’s low vantage point. “The one that’s even brighter than Polaris – the North Star.”
Kent hesitated. “Right.”
It was clear that Kent didn’t have a clue what stars he was referring to. He knew astronomical objects by name but tell him to point out different stars or constellations and he would just shrug.
Chandler knelt down beside him to better guide his line of sight.
“Those two stars in the plough?”
Alright that was one thing Kent could recognise. He nodded.
“They point towards the north star, the bright one there?”
“Ah,” Kent replied, but in truth he was more concerned with the way he had moved close to guide him. The subject might have initially come from a place of awkwardness, feeling very out of place after Chandler’s vulnerable fear that he’d hindered Kent’s career, but now his passion for random subjects seemed to be at the forefront.
“It’s just about the only constellation I know,” Kent admitted.
“It’s actually an asterism and not a constellation. It’s part of the constellation ursa major, the larger bear.”
He tried to point out the whole constellation, but no matter how hard he tried, Kent couldn’t picture a bear.
When Chandler finally gave up, he had somehow ended up sitting next to Kent, who smiled at the thought of them both technically stargazing together.
“Does that mean that there is a smaller bear as well, then?” Kent decided to keep the subject going.
“Oh yeah, the tip of the tail is the north star, actually.”
“That’s not a bear,” Kent said, when Chandler pointed out another set of stars that to him might as well have been picked at random, and when Chandler began to try to convince him of the stars’ likeness to a bear once more, Kent couldn’t help but laugh.
Chandler turned his head to look at Kent, and lying there like that, next to each other in the middle of a dark field, it was easy to imagine that this moment meant something.
“I just don’t want you to put your light under a bushel, Kent. You’re really smart and talented, but I’m afraid you’re holding yourself back, and that I might have attributed to that.”
Well, that didn’t help matters. Kent was happy he had the cover of darkness to hide the lovestruck gaze he couldn’t help but send Chandler’s way.
“It’s really okay. I want to be with the team much more than I want to make a career,” he said, and then thought to add. “I recall someone else at the team making that exact decision once.”
Chandler took the hint and let the hands he had been wringing fall to his side. One of them fell on top of Kent’s hand, and either he didn’t notice, or he didn’t care, cause he didn’t move it. Kent knew if he thought about it too much, he would move and bring attention to it, so he continued their other conversation.
“So why’s it called a bear? It can’t just be because they thought it looked like one. I refuse to believe that.”
“Oh no, all of the constellations have some stories connected to them. A young girl named Callisto was seduced by or possibly forcibly taken by Zeus and got a son. Zeus’ wife discovered this and transformed her into a bear as punishment. As a bear she was almost speared by her son, but Zeus averted this by turning them both into constellations.”
“That’s pretty fucked up. Why was she the one to get punished?”
“I suppose it’s easier to do something about that than the main god.”
“She could have tried,” Kent continued on, suddenly feeling very defensive about a mythological girl, and the lack of repercussions for Zeus.
“That’s what a lot of Greek mythology is like,” Chandler said.
“I’m not sure I want to hear about the other constellations now,” Kent said, but in truth, having Chandler beside him, talking about stars and mythology seemed almost magical to him.
Sometime in their conversation, their hands had become intertwined, and Kent’s heart was galloping, but still neither of them acknowledged it.
“They didn’t all survive being jerks. Orion the hunter,” he pointed out the belt, making sure to use the hand that wasn’t holding Kent’s. “Wanted to kill every animal on earth and was killed for it by a scorpion that became the star sign Scorpio, although he was revived with an antidote.”
“So, he still kind of survived,” Kent commented.
Chandler hesitated. “Yes.”
Silence fell over them again, and this time it was as close to comfortable as it had been yet.
Lying side by side, hand in hand, underneath a dark blue blanket full of silver stars, Kent began to believe that he had fallen asleep while listening to his music and was dreaming.
He wanted to address the elephant in the room so bad but was afraid that he’d somehow break the spell if he did so.
He finally took a chance and squeezed Chandler’s hand lightly.
There was a brief pause and then the squeeze was returned.
Kent looked over at Chandler, but he was still looking up at the sky.
A flash of light shot across the sky. A shooting star.
Kent knew what he was wishing for.
He turned back to look up at the sky, when he felt Chandler turn towards him. Slowly he turned to look at Chandler. He couldn’t read his expression in the darkness.
“I’m selfish,” Chandler said suddenly.
“What?” Kent asked quietly.
“When I heard of the promotion, I wasn’t thinking about you at first. For a moment I didn’t know that it was a past thing or that you’d declined it. I thought you were going to leave the team and I got- I wouldn’t say angry- scared, maybe- I- would have argued for you to stay, so it’s hypocritical of me to act like I’d feel guilty if I was the reason you declined.”
Kent didn’t know what to say. His breath increased with the rampaging rhythm of his heart.
“You- you haven’t let go?” Chandler squeezed his hand once more, and Kent responded by pulling Chandler closer until he was almost on top of him.
Chandler gasped and steadied himself with a hand on either side of Kent’s head. Kent grabbed him around the waist and kicked off the ground, so they both rolled over and Kent was now on top of Chandler, who let out a grunt of surprise.
“Too much?” Kent asked. He would stop if Chandler told him to, but he was already going in for a kiss before Chandler replied by doing the same resulting in a painful headbutt, but neither of them cared. Awkward and giddy giggles filled the spaces in between kisses.
They were delirious, the tension between them dissolving into a sort of feverish madness.
Kent was sure this couldn’t have happened anywhere but a dark empty field. Chandler was too repressed, and Kent was too scared, but in the faint light of glittering stars, they were free from earlier inhibitions.
Kent’s hands were already pulling at Chandler’s tie, while Chandler had pulled Kent’s shirttail out his pants, when blinding headlights suddenly illuminated the field around them.
The two men shot away from each other like mice from a bale of hay being lifted.
Chandler was upright within moments, his hands already fumbling to fix his tie.
“Chandler?” A man’s voice called.
“That’s right,” Chandler said, his voice an octave higher and much shakier than it usually was.
Kent’s face was burning. He felt hot and out of breath, and for a moment he considered lying face down in the field, to simply hide away.
The man on the road was professional and didn’t waste much time before he had Chandler come over and explain what had happened to the car.
Kent realised that it would only get weirder the longer he stayed down on the ground, so he got up to hover around the passenger side door of the car while the man was working under the hood.
Chandler stood beside him, watching intently. He’d completely regained his normal stature and demeanour, and Kent was sure the magical circumstances that had led them to a place he’d never thought they’d go, were gone and with them was the chance of them ever going there again.
So much for not saying his wish out loud.
He scraped his foot in the dirt, trying hard to hide his disappointment. Though, he soon got the feeling that he was being watched, and when he looked up, he found Chandler staring back, a coy smile on his face and stars in his eyes, and it was instantly clear that the magic wasn’t gone.