Chapter Text
Everything that night had come in halves. Half moon. Half unpacked. Half asleep. Half tangled. Half a tangerine uneaten on the table. Half the fridge filled with the leftovers from the dinner they had cooked for the other MARS members as a ‘thank you’ for helping them move into their new home. The lights half dimming bathing the room with a warm soft glow. Yet somehow Thame could not help but feel whole as he lay on the still sealed couch on top of Po watching his lover’s half-closed eyes fix themselves on the ceiling above.
Never in his life had he allowed himself to imagine that he could be this happy. Yet here he was.
For one, MARS had finally paid off their debt to ONER over the summer. It had been a burden carried well, but a heavy one that had stolen five years, - the prime of their lives. Thame knew a part of him should be angry for that alone, but he couldn’t bring himself to mar the happiness he had found in those years either. He had his friends. He has his music. He had Po. Those were the only things that had ever really mattered to him and now they weren’t going anywhere.
Thame twisted the ring on his wedding finger.
A habit he had developed since their engagement a year ago. Jun often teased him about it, wondering if he had doubts about their impending marriage (to which Dylan would grumble about having doubts about his own relationship with Jun). Thame would laugh it off, after all, it was all in good fun. But the truth was, Thame did not ever want to get used to having the ring on his finger. He never wanted to take it for granted that Po was his .
“Maybe…” Po’s voice drifted into his ear. “Maybe we should put stars up here.”
Thame followed his gaze to the ceiling. He could see why Po had suggested it. The previous owners had painted it a deep midnight blue that reminded him of a phrase he had once read in an old poem - a wine-dark sea . It was an odd choice for a ceiling, truth be told, but somehow, it worked.
“Like glow-in-the-dark ones?” Thame suggested.
“Hmm…”
To anyone else, Po’s response might have sounded non-committal but Thame had practically memorised all of his idiosyncrasies at this point, every little hmm meant something different. This particular one? It meant he liked the idea.
“I always wanted to do that as a kid,” continued Thame. “Never really got around to it though.”
He had been eight then, and glow-in-the-dark stars had been all the rage. He remembered then the concrete path by the school gates where he would sit with his friends as they described with smiles on their faces how their parents would hoist them up on their shoulders to help them create their own constellations and universes.
Thame’s parents had bought him the stars, sure enough, but they hadn’t quite bothered to help put them up. He hadn’t been tall enough then to do it himself and by the time he was, the burning desire to have them at all costs had turned to bitter ash. They were probably still there, encased in their film of plastic, pristine, unopened, lying at the bottom of his drawer in his childhood home.
Thame could feel Po’s gaze, it lay heavy on him, dark eyes burning through every wall Thame could hope to put up. For that very reason, Thame could not bring himself to look at Po . He might break completely if he did.
“Thame…” Po’s voice was barely above a whisper when he spoke, but it still managed to bring him out of the inevitable spiral his mind had been hellbent on dragging him into. “Have you ever thought of having a kid?”
At first, Thame did not register the true meaning of those words. When he did, he was sure he had imagined them entirely.
He looked up at Po at the sombre expression on his face, the way his lips were now slightly parted as if the vestiges of his question remained struck between his teeth. His eyes were on him, bright with an emotion Thame couldn’t quite place, but he did not doubt its sincerity.
Had he ever thought about it? Thame did not think so, at least not seriously and yet…
[He remembers that day as if it were yesterday. The summer heat crashing down on them like waves of the ocean in a storm. He doesn’t want to be there walking through the thronging crowds screaming his name as if he were some sort of messiah.
Once upon a time, the very sound of them would have filled Thame with a sense of adrenaline. But now all he feels is dread.
All he wants to do was go home. All he wants to do is cry. Even if that home is crumbling apart, turning to dust beneath his fingertips as he desperately tries to cling on to its remains. Even if he has to eventually wipe the tears away and force a smile on his face.
He doesn’t want to be here, but he’s not searching for an escape either.
Somehow it finds him anyway, in the midst of it all, a man, but somehow more than a man. He is the eye of a storm, the centre of an eclipse.
The rest of the world falls away.
At first, the man catches his eye for his beauty alone; he looks like something of a prince of old transposed to a time entirely too unbecoming of him. But his eyes stay on him for another reason entirely.
The man does not look at him.
Not really, not in the way everyone else was looking. His must have been the only pair of eyes not trained on his every move, instead, the man’s gaze is transfixed elsewhere.
It’s only when the man hoists a little girl on his shoulders that Thame understands why. He cannot help but smile]
“Not really,”.Thame admitted. “But…” he added, the image of the little girl on Po’s shoulders still lingering in his mind’s eye. “I think you’d be a great dad.”
Po gave him a soft smile and brought Thame into his arms. “And what about you hmm?”
In response, Thame pressed a kiss against Po’s lips. It was a soft kiss, featherlight and warm. Not enough to distract him entirely but enough to put his answer on hold. Thame was avoiding the question, he knew that, Po knew it too, but it could not be helped.
“Maybe we should get married first,” Thame suggested. “Or all four of your parents are going to throw a fit. They’ll probably kill me, child out of wedlock and all, hell they might even disown you.”
Po laughed then. It was a rare kind of laugh, open, without inhibition. His smile was imperfect when he laughed like, making his teeth look like they were at odd angles against his face. You could also see the creases by his eyes, deepening as time moved forward. Thame adored that laugh, mostly because he was the only one who got to see it.
“Alright alright…” Po said through laughter, his arms still holding Thame hostage against him, not that he was complaining. “We’ll get married first, maybe get a dog, and then-”
“A daughter?” Thame found himself saying, the hopeful intonation in his voice turning the statement into a question.
Po’s mirth leached away into something more sober but no less bright. His eyes seemed to burn with the same hope Thame felt.
“Whatever you want,” he whispered. There was such an earnestness to his words that a part of Thame almost felt guilty for it.
Po’s eyes moved past Thame and found themselves on the ceiling yet again.
“I’m going to buy glow-in-dark planets too,” he told Thame. “We’ll put Mars up first.”
Thame hadn’t known it was possible to fall in love with the same person more than once. Yet here he was falling in love with Po once again. And he hoped it wouldn't be for the last time.