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“But in a solitary life, there are rare moments when another soul dips near yours, as stars once a year brush the earth. Such a constellation was he to me.”
—Madeline Miller, Circe
You see, if Till had a nicer telescope, he would have never spotted the kid on the balcony of that nicer house with the hefty compound model, since you can’t see things on earth with a telescope unless it’s a sub-par refractor much like his own.
Till can get absorbed in the sky all he wants, look through the eye of his telescope until there’s a tender red line around his eye socket, but at the end of the day he’s just looking.
He doesn’t calculate anything or take pictures, just looks, and happens upon the light of a laptop screen far from his own house but still slightly visible to his naked eye. It shines on someone’s face, a gentle blue—the image is fuzzy in a way that makes Till wonder.
He knows where that street is, knows the house that’s on the end of it with a humble little balcony between the outcrops of a roof speckled with fallen twigs and leaves. He knew, from a young age, about the big telescope on that balcony.
It’s the last two-story house before they start fading into the more modest, ranch-style places with gardens and occasional coops, until the sparseness becomes nothing. The house is placed precisely on the start of the middle of nowhere. Past it, roads become dirt and lead into fields that seem limitless, no streetlights to illuminate them.
The darkness is unsettling to most people in Till’s neighborhood, but he knows the telescope on the balcony is the reason that family stays.
His mother says the father of that family is an astronomer and that the unlit fields are dark sky reserves owned by the county—Till thinks that’s great and all, but it doesn’t mean he isn’t scared of going in the dark alone.
The darkness there is a different kind, the expanse of the atmosphere above you feeling both infinitely huge and suffocating. The one time he even came close to the outskirts of those dirt roads, he felt overwhelmingly lonely and small. He supposes he’s meant to stay on his balcony, peeking at the fancy telescope just in his line of sight and longing to look through it.
Some things are meant to happen.
There are some people that are meant to meet each other, and Till is convinced he was meant to meet the person at the telescope, no matter how much logic threatens to impede that.
Fate is powerful, and if he didn’t wholeheartedly believe in that before, he certainly does now, seeing the mysterious boy appear on the balcony right as Till passes his house on his bike after having taken the long way home.
Till hears the ugly sound of his tires skidding to a stop over the asphalt—the impulsion to speak to him is too strong, strong enough that his knuckles tense around his brake.
He doesn’t hesitate to call a short “Hey” up at the boy, followed by “What kind of telescope is that?”
Till points, arm extended as far as it can go while he adjusts his legs around his bike. He clears his throat and raises his voice once again when the boy finally notices him, freezing in place beside his foldable table.
“Your telescope.”
“What about it?”
His crew neck is pulled over his knuckles and he leans over the railing of his balcony, brow furrowed in annoyance. Till locks eyes with him, then, mouth agape.
“Is it a Celestron?”
The boy’s eyes widen at that and he pats himself on the back for his limited knowledge on telescope brands.
“No, a Meade.”
“A What?”
There’s a hint of a smile when he reluctantly raises his voice.
“A Meade.”
“Oh my God.” Till mutters to himself. Last time he checked, a Meade compound telescope cost a fortune. “The—the two million won one?”
“Yeah. It’s my dad’s.”
So his mom was telling the truth.
Till stares at the telescope and the boy stares at Till, who in turn stares back at him, who stares at the telescope, then finally at Till again.
The eye contact is awkward.
But Till's gaping shock makes the boy on the balcony smile down at him.
“Are you busy?”
“Why?”
The boy wrings his hands a bit, clearly conscious of the volume of his voice. “You could—if you’re interested, you could come take a look.”
“I could?” Till shouts, louder than before, his eyes lighting up. “I’m not busy, I was just on a bike ride—”
“I’ll come downstairs and open the door, then.” He turns to his sliding glass door before abruptly leaning off the balcony once more. “I’m Ivan, by the way.”
This is singlehandedly the most impetuous thing either of them have ever done—Till’s heart thrums in his chest when Ivan ducks back into his house, his feet moving on his own accord as he parks his bike beside the mailbox.
He’s not thinking straight.
What if Ivan’s a murderer? What if he laughs at him?
“I’m Till.” He blurts the second the door opens. “Nice to meet you.”
He considered Ivan being a murderer, but he didn’t consider Ivan being really, really handsome up close, even in the low light of evening. With wavy dark hair and coal-fever eyes, even his smile is punctuated by a charming little fang.
Now he really isn’t thinking straight, no pun intended.
Ivan laughs awkwardly.
Till bows before stepping inside, toeing off his shoes and following him upstairs. He asks the other how old he is, and it turns out they’re the same age (though Till is older by a few months)—it makes him swallow, his mouth suddenly dry.
That’s too much of a coincidence, right?
There are coincidences and there are also things you can choose for yourself, he supposes.
He was the one who stopped his bike under the balcony only to end up sitting shyly beside the boy he’s been peering at from afar while he punches coordinates into his telescope.
But the thing is, Ivan was the one who invited him inside.
Fate is a two-way street.
-·=»‡«=·-
Ivan is interesting, to say the least.
Till learns quite a few notable things about him.
He’s nocturnal. Legitimately nocturnal, as in he usually goes to bed around six in the morning and wakes up around four in the afternoon or later, because you can’t use a telescope during the day, of course.
He’s only eighteen but he’s technically a professional astrophotographer; he takes pictures for his dad’s astronomy website and gets paid quite a sum of money, all of which goes into his college fund.
That’s when Till knows Ivan is smart.
If he was Ivan, he’d spend it all.
So yes, he is smart, but very obviously lonely.
It’s not an aching loneliness, not one that Till feels bad about. Though it might be a selective one.
He talks quickly and quietly but laughs even louder than Till does—he wonders how many people have heard it out of him and how long it took them to get it to happen.
Till manages in the span of a few hours.
The loneliness comes from the fact that he’s been homeschooled since high school began.
Traditional school takes place during the day, but all of Ivan’s studying happens under his desk lamp, reading glasses gradually sliding down his nose.
He pushes the bridge up with his index finger.
Till thinks they’d definitely suit a school uniform, but they also have a reflective quality in the dark, making him sort of glow against the pitch blackness in the horizon.
Now that he thinks about it, spending so much time marveling at things that are so far away and so huge probably contributes to the whole “loneliness” thing.
Ivan is the most interesting person Till has ever met, lithe and friendly in a sort of somber way, standing only a few inches taller than himself.
It’s not that Till thinks he’s above him, but he does look up to him, literally and figuratively.
He tends to be looking up when he’s around him, too, at things that are much more than a few inches above his head. He swears he starts to get a sore neck after hanging out with Ivan.
Still, he just watches.
Ivan tells him he usually takes his dad’s truck out to the dark sky fields to take pictures, but he’s been working on photographing the moon for a bit over half a lunar cycle. He can photograph that from his balcony, so Till rides his bike over as the sun sets and keeps Ivan company while he edits and takes pictures.
Sometimes they talk all night and sometimes they don’t talk at all.
Ivan appreciates the feeling of being alone in a way that isn’t lonely—alone in the company of another person.
Till frowns when he makes his way over. Ivan is nearly finished photographing the lunar cycle. But it's cloudy. He’d gotten so far and it’s starting to look like he won’t be able to photograph the whole thing.
Till lets himself in, as Ivan had instructed him to, opening the familiar first door on the left of the upstairs hallway, surprised to see Ivan facing away from said door in his bed.
The curtains to the balcony are closed and Ivan stares at them pathetically. The extra weight that plops down on his bed makes his neck crane back, but doesn’t make him turn around.
“I don’t think it’s gonna clear up.” He says gravely, to the wall. And Till’s heart breaks—it must feel awful. Whether or not he can finish his project is completely out of his control.
“It might, you never know.”
Till stands and draws the curtains to look out over the balcony. The camera is ready, attached to the eyepiece and hooked up just as Ivan had explained to him. He can’t even see the moon through the clouds.
Ivan sighs from his bed.
“Why do you stay up so late for me?”
Till laughs helplessly.
“Because I like hanging out with you, duh.”
And no, Ivan, this doesn’t make you useless.
That’s what he wants to say.
He must’ve got that, because Till catches a soft smile from him. He’s not wearing his glasses, so Till grabs them from Ivan’s bedside table and hands them over.
“Thank you.”
Whether he was thanking him for the glasses or not doesn’t matter, all that matters is that Ivan sits up in bed and widens his eyes cutely when he slides them on.
“Since I’m already here…” Till says cautiously, “can I stay for the night?”
A sleepover isn’t new, but typically Till hangs around under the excuse that he’s learning from Ivan.
“But we won’t be…” Ivan regards the telescope just outside the doorwall.
“I don’t care if we take pictures or not. I told you, I like hanging out with you.”
Till takes his socks off and hops onto Ivan’s bed, lifting the covers enough to slide his legs in while he sits against the bedframe. “Can I get under here?” He asks, having already wiggled under the blanket.
Ivan nods anyway.
And maybe that night makes up for all the time Till spent looking from afar, because they’re shoulder-to-shoulder for that whole of it, listening to each other’s ramblings and sinking lower and lower into the bed.
Neither of them could explain how they ended up facing each other with a comforter pulled up to their chests—tiny, lingering touches being shared between them—but it feels normal.
Normal, even though they only met around a month ago.
A lunar cycle ago.
If Ivan hadn’t chosen to record the moon’s phases the day Till rode past his house that late evening, they would’ve never met. He doesn’t usually photograph from his balcony.
-·=»‡«=·-
It’s nearing two in the morning, which is late for Till.
Ivan’s usually more awake at this hour, editing pictures or doing schoolwork, but tonight he feels himself drifting just as much as Till does. His yawns are contagious. It’s amazing he can still think of things to talk about.
“Did you know Andromeda is going to collide with the Milky Way?”
Ivan probably knows—he’s shown Till pictures he’s taken of Andromeda before.
“Mm.” Ivan confirms absentmindedly, focused entirely on playing with Till’s fingers. “In four billion years, though. We have some time.”
“If humans are still around, do you think it’ll kill us?” There’s a hint of uneasiness when Till’s fingers curl loosely around Ivan’s thumb.
“The collision would be really, really slow, when it does happen, but I don’t think we can be sure.”
“I hope reincarnation is real so I get to see it.”
Ivan probably wants to dismiss that.
He thinks too logically for his own good—he’s never been the type to believe in dreamier things like astrology and luck and life after death, but Till is smarter than he thinks. He’s organic in a way that Ivan can’t relate to, but he tries.
He likes the thought of being able to meet Till in another life. It’s comforting. He thinks that’s why Till is so fond of those kinds of thoughts, and possibly why his thoughts are so persistent and intimate.
Instead, he smiles.
“Me too.”
Till doesn’t return the smile, as much as he wishes he could.
Something in the air changes—Till had thought too much.
He’s prone to that.
He just sort of crumples into Ivan’s frame, scooting forward and curling his body into his. He pushes his face into his chest until he only sees black, just black, a black with no stars and no galaxy threatening to collide with their own.
A larger body curls around a smaller one and they become one, and it’s not scary because it’s not a matter of celestial bodies, not a matter of solar systems bumping into each other. It’s just Ivan throwing an arm over Till in the dark of his room, a gesture of comfort and understanding that Ivan wishes he had when he’d felt as humbled by what is above the world around him.
If they’d never met, maybe Ivan would’ve been upset that he fell asleep just before the sky cleared up. It’s crazy that the steady beating heart and sleepy, linen-scented body tucked under his chin feels more important than any picture he could be taking, perhaps even more important than the subject matter itself.
The moon could vanish and Ivan thinks he’d be fine with it as long as Till stayed with him.
-·=»‡«=·-
The hesitance Till had the first few times Ivan urged him to take his own pictures was a little absurd—he’d used Ivan’s telescope plenty of times before, but the second he’s in charge of the camera, he’s afraid he’ll break it.
It doesn’t help that everything Ivan tells him about apertures and ISOs and exposures sound like gibberish all strung together, either. He’s patient despite everything, though, likely having more faith in Till than Till has in himself.
He takes naps in the afternoon to compensate for the sleep he doesn’t get in the night and to make sure Ivan doesn’t worry about him.
Ivan doesn’t often worry, but Till wouldn’t want him to.
He gets a feeling that if he worried about anything, it’d be him.
That person at the telescope on the balcony so far from him has long since become a memory, a concept that Till no longer relates to when he’s on that balcony, his hand rested gingerly on his back while he tries to keep his eyes from creasing around the eyepiece from smiling.
His glasses reflect the blinding light of his laptop screen, but in a way that’s transparent and more detailed. Before, if he’d squinted, Till could’ve sworn that the lenses were stars, that the iris was a miasma of fire. And the whites of the eyes behind them, he has found, aren’t quite as luminescent, but they do make Till’s spine tingle.
Anyway, Ivan had invited him over to take pictures without any help for once, and through his ever-present hesitance, he agrees.
He’s at the point where he lets himself in and pads up the stairs alone, careful not to wake Ivan’s parents. At first, the trek felt like an adventure—it’s more homey every time he comes but doesn’t really lose any of its adventurous charm, because Till can feel in his gut that he’s about to feel like he’s on another planet for the night.
He’s over almost four times a week and it doesn’t get old.
Ivan smiles when Till lets himself into his room.
That doesn’t get old, either.
In fact, it gets better with time, makes his stomach twist into itself and his cheeks bunch up in a grin. Ivan rises from his desk chair to open the doorwall to the balcony and Till follows.
“I think I want to try Andromeda.” He declares, swinging his designated milk crate next to the folding table with Ivan’s laptop and in front of the telescope. Ivan scoots his stool to Till’s usual watching spot and furrows his brow.
“Andromeda is pretty tricky.”
“Yeah, but conditions are really good tonight, so I should be okay, right?”
Ivan beams at his enthusiasm.
“You should be. It might come out better if we went out to the field, but…”
Till’s already pulled up the planetarium on Ivan’s laptop, leaning over the desk intently.
“That’s fine. I just wanna practice.”
And practice he does.
Ivan had meant to study while he let Till take pictures, but he’s absolutely in awe of how impressive he is. There are some times where he clearly hiccups, but he’s determined and doesn’t ask for help once—he finds a sweet spot for the exposure time around an hour in, and proceeds in taking enough to stack them well and make sure there’s minimal blur.
“Last one.”
Till announces at whatever hour it is. It's silent save for the faraway ambience of the nearest town and the chorus of crickets. Ivan waits to speak until Till hits the shutter button, backing away from the scope and sighing with a victorious smile.
He scoots his crate to look out over the balcony and gestures for Till to do the same with his stool, careful not to jostle the telescope.
“How’d you get into this? Stargazing, I mean.”
Till bows his head.
“It’s kind of embarrassing.”
“Shit, now I have to know.”
Suddenly, he’s glad they aren’t sitting to face each other—Till is looking off the balcony, flustered, and Ivan’s knee is brushing against his. Till doesn’t see it, but Ivan stares intently at his side profile as if he were looking through the eyepiece of his scope.
He inhales.
“When I was, like, eleven, I was at the Hangang river with my mom and I saw a shooting star—meteor, or whatever. You can’t see as many stars there as you can here, so it had to have been super bright… I panicked because I didn’t make a wish in time, and my mom felt bad that I was so upset about it, so she bought me a telescope and told me I could look for another one.”
Thinking about it, Till did find another one. He found one brighter and better and closer than the one he had seen so many years ago.
“That’s cute, though.” Ivan remarks, “How old were you again?”
“Eleven.”
Ivan ponders that, brows eventually furrowing and mouth going slightly agape.
“I think I remember that meteor shower. My dad took me out to the field to see it with him.”
Till swallows.
“You think we saw the same meteor?”
“Is it weird that I hope we did?”
Till just laughs, nudging him where their knees touch.
It’s not weird, or at least Till doesn’t think so—it’s just out of character for Ivan. When he finally looks to his side, he catches Ivan staring at him with the most fondness he thinks he’s ever seen.
It’s overwhelming and he feels his throat closes up.
“If I could go back in time, I would’ve wished for you.”
This is admitted in a whisper.
He gets this feeling that the night sky won’t ever be the same if he’s not looking at it with Ivan. There’s an appreciation that comes with the stars and the planets being your muse, an appreciation Till would’ve never known if he hadn’t met him.
Ivan rests a hand on Till’s thigh and leans in, a chill running down Till’s spine when their noses brush.
They’ve been outside for a little too long—the night is dry and cool and Till can feel that on Ivan’s chapped lips.
It’s nice, though, that it’s just them and the moon and the visible stars seeing this. He wants to hold him so badly, but it doesn’t seem appropriate while he’s seated on a milk crate.
Ivan pulls away and Till blushes hotly.
He almost expects Ivan to shrug, maybe laugh and say that wishing on a shooting star wouldn’t have done any good, maybe that they would’ve met either way, but he stays quiet for a moment, lets the feeling of his lips linger on Till’s while he turns to look over the railing again.
His head is heavy on Till’s shoulder when he smiles and says, “Me too.”
-·=»‡«=·-
It occurs to Till that going out to the dark sky reserves for a date might’ve been a bad idea.
With anyone else, it would be a terrible idea, but with Ivan, it’s just... not good.
Not that Ivan is the one making it bad—it’s just that Till, as ironic as it is, is scared of the dark, or at least the kind of dark that blankets the sky reserves. He wonders how he got himself into this situation, piling equipment, blankets, and pillows into the covered back of Ivan’s dad’s truck.
“Would you maybe want to go on a date some time?” Till had blurted around sunrise some nights before, utterly sick of looking at Andromeda from how much editing Ivan walked him through. His eyes were tired and sunken in but he still found it in himself to sweat with nervousness.
Ivan huffed, then, looking a little bashful.
“Have these not been dates?”
“I—” Till was a stammering mess. “I’m—but I’m in my pajamas.”
And that was that.
“Why’re you so shaky?”
Ivan asks when he revs the engine, hand firm around the stick shift. Till wishes it wasn’t a stick so Ivan could hold his hand, comfort him, or something.
“I’m a good driver, I promise. Especially with equipment in the back.”
“The fields just—they scare the shit out of me, if I’m being honest.”
They’re somewhere Till has always wanted to be but has never had the company or the guts for.
“Psh.”
Ivan’s side profile is handsome—Till knew that, but it’s especially evident when he twists his torso to back out out his driveway.
“Anything you have to be scared of is on this planet. If we hear coyotes howling, we’ll go back. Simple as that.”
Till finds that the scariest part of the dark sky reserves is the silence.
When he’s too far from Ivan, he feels like the sky is eating him alive, drowning and deafening him, but when Ivan pulls him to his side with an arm around his waist, his breath brings him back down to Earth.
Earth, or whatever plane of existence he’s on when he’s with Ivan.
Through his trembling, Till thinks the sky is so incredibly humbling the darker it is—he’s never seen so many stars in one place before.
It’s even more amazing that he’s scared of it, completely and utterly terrified of something so breathtaking and harmless. Ivan is Till’s atmosphere, protecting him from the light of the stars with a held hand as they run through the wild grass.
They didn’t plan to take a lot of pictures—it was a date, after all, not work.
And they didn’t bring the telescope either, so they took shots of the entire Milky Way with Ivan’s DSLR, speaking quietly next to each other’s ears and holding each other loosely until Till settles enough to take a few pictures of his own while Ivan sets up a makeshift bed in the back of the truck.
Even without editing, the images that come out of each exposure make Till’s stomach flip.
There’s just so much light, knitted into the dark between stars and clouds of gas and dust, that the human eye can’t see no matter how long it looks or how wide it's opened. There are people who go out of their way to see that light—and Till thinks he understands that, now.
He understands the twinkle in Ivan’s eyes and why he goes quiet when he’s happy, enough to well with tears.
The back of the truck smells overwhelmingly like Ivan when he climbs in, all his blankets are spread out over the bed and the pillows look inviting as ever.
What’s more inviting, though, is Ivan’s chest when he lies down—Till thinks that’s the best pillow.
Long fingers card through his silver hair and Till sighs, looking up at the roof above them.
Even with the sky beyond it, he thinks this little world he has with Ivan is just fine.
It’s more than enough.
He's been overwhelmed since they drove out to the field and it’s only worse now. It’s overwhelming in a different way, like in the sense that it doesn’t work him up—but does the opposite.
Till’s eyelids feel heavy not long after he lies with Ivan and he bites his lip.
“I wanna say something, but I’m afraid it’ll sound stupid.”
There’s a long pause where Ivan seems to be trying to find something to say. He thumbs over Till’s shoulder and Till runs a hand up Ivan’s side.
“What? You want to profess your undying love to me already?”
Till punches his chest, smiling despite everything.
“Something like that. I just really, really, like you.” He takes it back—this little universe they’re in is suffocating. He feels like crying, or at least hiding his face in Ivan’s collarbone. “I feel like I… like I was supposed to…”
“Like you were supposed to meet me?”
Maybe it’s not as suffocating as it is a breath of fresh air.
And Till might not be as smart as Ivan, but it doesn't mean he isn't valid for believing in luck, for believing in fate. And Ivan might be smarter than Till, but he really never understood those things until he met him.
His hand returns to Till’s hair.
"I get that. I feel like that too, sometimes."
Till exhales shakily.
There’s something unspoken between them that he can’t quite pinpoint—it’s been simmering for a few months, now. It’s this feeling he gets when he’s around Ivan. It feels like when he looks straight up into the sky, the feeling that his gaze is going on for lightyears and that he is… encompassed, surrounded by something.
The only difference is that he doesn’t feel so very small around Ivan, just warm and tingly and wonderful.
Ivan speaks up first, laughing with a single breath.
"You can tell me if you want to, you know."
Ah, so that’s what it is.
"I love you."
"I love you too."
There are some people that are meant to meet each other.
Whether by fate or by an inane string of coincidences, some things are just meant to happen.
It doesn’t have to be as grand as the stars aligning or the planets being in retrograde, it can just be a matter of stumbling upon another—it can be a matter of calling up to a balcony and rambling about expensive telescopes, even.
Though that had a lot to do with the position the moon was in, he supposes.
Ivan and Till were supposed to meet each other.
Maybe they weren’t supposed to fall in love, but it definitely happened, somewhere between long days spent planning long nights and those same long nights spent together.
Always, always together.
And so they set up the camera on the tripod because Ivan begged Till to get up for one more picture—he fumbles with the settings and pulls Till by the hand some distance in front of the lense, pulling him close and not seeing him, but feeling him all the same.
The shutter clicks.