Chapter Text
Chapter 1
The skies above resembled a tumultuous sea that some wealthy prankster had filled with fun bath bombs: a violent swirling mess of rich pinks and violets with an occasional vein of brilliant gold. If you or I were to look up at those skies, we likely would have been filled either with insurmountable wonder, profound and horrible terror, or a dreadful mix of the two – for skies such as those have never graced the sad helm of our planet. But as our super emo protagonist Prince Hamlet gazed into the heavens, he felt nothing. This strange and beautiful sky was simply a fixture over Space Denmark, and he had grown used to it in much the same way that we take for granted the flowers in springtime. Every once in a while, in a moment of silence and reflection, the sky’s decadent beauty would register vaguely in the back of his mind, but in the times between those infrequent reveries it was nearly as unnoticed as it was unappreciated.
Hamlet sat under a cool space tree, gazing not into the sky itself but rather at a quickly approaching object suspended therein – a spaceship hurtling madly downwards and glowing with a hot white light because it was on fire. He watched with indifferent curiosity as the spaceship fell. From such a great distance the descent almost looked gentle. The ship disappeared below the horizon, and there was a brilliant flash, and an awesome explosion noise, and Hamlet could only guess that all of the passengers trapped inside the smoldering hull were now dead. He giggled. Haha, death. He was so emo.
He flung himself down in the soft blue space grass and pushed his hair over his eyes. Life is short and unpleasant, and we are all but specks of dust drifting endlessly into the Great and Horrible Void. Ugh. What was he even doing, sitting under a tree reflecting on sad emo thoughts? He was a beautiful young space prince, possessing money and power beyond even his own comprehension – the world (a bizarre, alien world) was his oyster. He should go party. Life didn’t have to be horrible, probably.
He crawled to his feet and took off at a brisk shuffle towards Space Elsinore. He knew he would find something cool to do there. After his mother’s and uncle’s wedding, the festivities had not tapered off, but instead grew wilder and more frequent, just as my manic episodes did leading up to finals week. For the past month – although the prince had not attended them – there had been awesome space raves daily.
“Awesome Space Raves Daily,” thought Hamlet. “That would be a great name for a band.”
Maybe, if he survived the shitstorm that was Space Denmark, Hamlet would start a band and name it “Awesome Space Raves Daily.” Maybe they would tour the galaxy, and all their merch would be in cool Day-Glo rave colors, and there would be raves after every show, and hot space groupies.
Maybe someday all of this awesome shit would go down — maybe someday he would learn to play an instrument — but for now, Hamlet was just going to party.
As he continued on his way, Space Elsinore rose slowly over the horizon before him, a fantastic behemoth of angular chrome gleaming so brightly under the late afternoon sun that it looked as though it were made not of cement and metal but of light itself, a castle of fire sent from the heavens to destroy us. It shone with a light that was not beautiful, but violent, and it assaulted Hamlet’s eyes so that as he walked onward he lowered his gaze to the ground and wished desperately for a pair of cool shades. As he neared the castle, the prince could hear house music playing gently from within. There was indeed an awesome space rave going on.
By the time he reached the castle door, the music was very loud. He could feel the bass resonate through him, and he began to fear that if he entered the castle the flesh would vibrate off his bones and he would only be a skeleton. He opened the door anyway and strolled boldly in, because skeletons are cool.
Although he wouldn’t have admitted it, it was much to Hamlet’s relief that he did not become a skeleton upon entering Space Elsinore. His bones, although rattled a bit by the pounding bass, were safe under his skin as he walked through the loud empty hallways to his room to change into a cool rave outfit.
Finding something suitable for a rave, however, was quite a bit harder than Hamlet had initially thought. The only thing in his closet that came close to rave wear was a bright orange squid hat, a relic of his willfully forgotten years in space high school — he and his bros Rosencrantz and Guildenstern were the Squid Squad for Halloween one year. Hamlet wasn’t sure if people wore squid hats to raves, but it was a much brighter color than anything else he owned, so he pulled it on over his tangled black hair. He looked in the mirror. He didn’t look like a rave goer, just a sad emo boy with a squid on his head.
Maybe he shouldn’t even try to go. If he was so out of place just standing before the mirror in a squid hat heavens knows how weird he would feel at an actual rave, with the loud music and all the sweaty drunk space people. He dropped the squid hat on the floor and sank dejectedly onto his bed, resigning himself once again to the skinny-jeans-and-black-eyeliner melancholy that had of late been his default mode.
He lay there for a few moments, simultaneously regretting his decision not to party and trying to work up the courage to rethink that decision, when suddenly there came a knock at his door. He reached halfheartedly in the door’s direction but made no effort to rise from the bed. He was too sad and angry to answer a door right now.
There came another knock.
“Hamlet?”
Familiarity is in most cases disappointing — to those possessing such restless souls as Hamlet’s, it is rarely anything else. The voice behind the door, however, rang with a familiarity that was at once reassuring and hopeful. Hamlet leapt off the bed and flew to the door, flinging it open with such force that he probably damaged the hinges a little bit, but he didn’t care, for within the doorframe stood the wonderful Horatio, and his warm amber eyes were like a cup of tea on a blustery day, and at his appearance the very air in the room seemed to grow lighter. Hamlet stepped forward and hugged him.
They stood there in silence for some moments, the Prince’s face buried platonically in Horatio’s shirt, breathing in the scent of friendship. It was very nice. After not enough time had passed, Horatio the Human Blanket became Horatio Standing at a Polite But Still Friendly Distance, and Hamlet found the room a little chilly without his arms around him. He pushed his hair away from his eyes and leaned against the doorframe, super chill.
“Yo.”
“Yo.”
“I didn’t think school was out yet. What are you doing here?”
“Your mom.”
Wow. That was fucking savage. Horatio was a comic genius. Hamlet laughed one of those weird pseudo-laughs where you don’t actually make any noise, but just blow air out your nose. Horatio grinned.
“Nah. I just was kind of bored and lonely. I dunno.”
“Wow,” said Hamlet. “That’s gay.”
Horatio just smiled and shrugged. But it was actually really super gay.