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“Woah.”
Sebastian hears the exclamation from vaguely behind him, breathy and awed, like a gentle breeze.
He doesn’t glance back to look at Sam. He simply takes another puff of his cigarette and blows it out over the river in front of him, watching the way it curls up and dies in the air.
“What?” he says.
“Dude. You gotta come see this.”
“What?”
“Just come look.”
Sebastian finally turns around as commanded. Sam’s position has changed since the last time Sebastian looked at him. He had been upright, and now he’s fully laid down, sprawled out on the grass with his elbows bent at either side of his head.
He looks like an angel. Which is a thought that Sebastian sucks in and spits out of his lungs like the last drag of his cigarette. Unwanted; unwelcome.
Sam peels his upper body off the ground, just enough to meet Sebastian’s eyes. He pats the space beside him. It’s rain-damp and muddy. It looks horribly uninviting. But Sebastian can’t say no to Sam when their eyes are locked like this. There’s a plea encircled in moonlit green; a steady affirmative.
He paces backward and lowers himself onto the grass. Water seeps through the back of his jeans.
“C’mon.” Sam tugs on Sebastian’s baggy sleeve. “Lie down.”
If Sebastian’s resolve had already been worn down by Sam’s eyes, it’s completely pulverised by Sam’s touch. He reclines until the back of his hoodie is soaked all the way through, too.
Sam doesn’t let go of his arm.
“Look.”
Sebastian looks.
Usually, Sebastian doesn’t care much for stars. Stars are Maru’s thing, and anything that Maru likes, he resents by default. He much prefers thick veils of dark clouds, promising rain and gloom and misery. He likes it when the outside of the world mirrors the inside of himself. He likes when everyone is tucked away inside, and he can pretend, for as long as the illusion lasts, that he’s the only one left in the wisps of a ghost town.
But he can admit, as he lies here, that the sky looks pretty fucking cool when the storm is clearing. The way the stars peer from behind the veil, dots of twinkling white among pervasive grey. The way the clouds part and the giant, beaming moon butters their edges silver. The way he turns to his left and finds something just as bright, just as beautiful, just as mesmerising.
Sam is staring at him, too.