Chapter Text
James had always been the kind of person people naturally gravitated toward; calm, steady, effortlessly composed. Maybe it was his quiet confidence, or the way he always remembered small things about people, their coffee order, their favorite spot in the library, the music they liked. To Martin, it was everything.
Ever since he was eight, Martin’s world had revolved around James.
Their houses had shared a fence, and when Martin was small enough to see the world through wooden slats, James was already taller, always out of reach, always doing something that looked impossibly grown-up.
He remembered that first summer when James teaching him how to hold a soccer ball, how to ride a bike without wobbling. Back then, Martin thought that if he just kept running, he could catch up someday.
But he never really did.
When Martin got into the same college, he didn’t tell anyone why he’d chosen it. Not even his parents, not even himself, really. He just smiled when he saw the acceptance letter, tracing the crest at the top with trembling fingers. Because it wasn’t just a college. It was his college, the one James had mentioned years ago while helping Martin with algebra, leaning over his notebook with that gentle patience that always made Martin’s heart do strange things.
Now, standing in the same hallway as James, breathing the same air, it felt surreal. Like a promise fulfilled too quietly.
James’s dorm room was one floor above his, but Martin always found excuses to go there.
Sometimes he brought extra snacks, claiming he’d overbought.
Sometimes he said he needed help with his assignment, even if he’d already finished it.
Sometimes he just passed by, hoping to hear James’s voice through the half-open door.
And James; a kind, oblivious James, always welcomed him in.
“Come in, Mart,” he’d say with a grin. “You hungry?”
Martin would nod, pretending it was the food he came for.
But really, it was the small things. The way James’s voice dipped when he was thinking, the way his hair fell across his forehead when he leaned over his desk, and the quiet sound of him breathing when they both stayed up late, studying side by side until the campus outside fell silent. Those were the moments Martin hoarded. Tiny, ordinary, devastating.
Sometimes, when James laughed, Martin felt his chest tighten; that kind of ache that wasn’t pain, exactly, but something close to it. He’d stare a moment too long, memorizing how light caught the corner of James’s eyes, and then look away before it became obvious.
It was a dangerous kind of devotion, the kind you carried quietly, folded between pages of your life like a pressed flower you could never show anyone. Because James didn’t see him that way, he never had. To James, he was the same kid who used to follow him home from the park, the one who’d looked up with big, curious eyes and asked endless questions.
And Martin could never blame him for that.
He tried to move on. He went to class, laughed with his new friends, even went on a date once—a sweet, soft-spoken girl from literature. But halfway through the evening, when she smiled, he caught himself thinking that James didn’t smile like that; James’s smiles were smaller, quieter, softer, like they were secrets meant just for the person who noticed.
He excused himself early that night. He walked aimlessly across campus until he found himself standing outside James’s dorm. The lights were still on. Through the thin curtains, he saw James hunched over his desk, hair tousled, pencil tapping lightly against a notebook.
Something inside Martin broke and mended all at once. He wanted to knock. He wanted to go in and sit beside him again. But instead, he stayed there, just watching, just breathing the same air through distance. It was enough. It had to be.
Martin knew what this was, he knew it wasn’t something that could ever be said aloud. It wasn’t the kind of feeling you confessed. It was the kind you carried quietly, out of respect, out of fear, out of love. He told himself it would fade someday. That he’d stop tracing James’s steps, stop measuring time by when he’d see him next.
But the truth was simple, and cruelly beautiful; even if James never looked back, Martin would always be there, walking a few steps behind, orbiting the warmth that would never be his to hold.
And maybe that was enough.
To love him silently.
To be close, even if not chosen.
To live in the gravity of someone who would never realize how many constellations were drawn in the space between their hands.