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Summer, as Ren had so wisely told him while he was pressing the waterbottle full of vodka into his hands, was not going to last forever. Before too long Martyn would be off at university, and while of course they’d see each other in the holidays and they could call whenever they liked, there was just going to be something about the distance that came with living and studying somewhere entirely new that Martyn could already feel would get in the way of him talking to Ren as often as he really wanted to.
So tonight, they’d told their parents (who’d been largely unbothered by the prospect) that they weren’t going to be back until past midnight, and they’d headed for the nearest field, as was the most sacred of British teenage rituals.
It was bloody cold out. Even for August - and it was a hot August, as Ren often bemoaned the culpability of the same one hundred companies (“We know the names of the CEOs!”) for causing these indelible heat waves, blots on the sprawl of the calendar that spanned so many more months than it had in the years before and yet still felt like they had passed so unbearably fast when he held it up to the span of the rest of his life. Autumn term was coming, and then winter and spring and then summer again, and then he’d be back for a few months, and it’d all keep spinning until they flew off the sides of the earth from the force of it.
Martyn was moving in two weeks. Ren was staying behind. Time was going to pass whether they liked it or not. But for now it was a cold night in August, and they were sitting in a field drinking cheap vodka under the stars.
Just the two of them.
Wasn’t like that had never been the case before - of course Martyn had been trailing Ren since he’d known the boy (man, he was becoming; they both were), but it had sort of taken on a different cadence at some point in the last… Well, really, he wasn’t sure. Gun to his head, he’d say it had to be after year nine, because Martyn hadn’t even known he liked boys in year eight, hence the whole situation with the jacket that was currently shoved in the back of his wardrobe, sworn off as a cautionary tale about learning to tell the difference between fashion sense and crushes. But the shift between Ren’s my best mate and I am so in love with you it makes me feel sick to think about it too hard had come so gradual, so subtle that he’d barely noticed it until he was absolutely up to his ears in hopeless romantic longing and had absolute jack shit idea what to do about it. Cry, probably. Definitely not confess anything.
(Yes, it was a bit of a stupid move to keep all his feelings close to his chest till the day he died, but he’d never asked anyone out before and he sure as hell wasn’t gonna gain the courage to start right now. Not with grass stains on his shorts and goosebumps down his legs and several drops of spilled vodka staining his shirt fabric.)
It was a cold night, and it was cloudless, which was great news for Ren’s poetic sensibilities. “You know,” he said, and flung his arm out wide with the waterbottle still clutched in one cold-whitened hand, “I read this thing, once, right? About the stars?”
“Yeah?”
“And how it’s - and how the sky is so dark. Even though it should be - there’s
billions
of stars up there, right. So many millions of stars in the sky. But it’s still dark.”
“Yeah.”
“And I read that the reason for that… is because our universe is too young for the light from all the stars to get here.”
“Oh.”
He leaned over, bonking his head against Martyn’s shoulder and then staying there. “Can you imagine? If we could see the light of every single star from here?”
“It’d be bright,” offered Martyn, trying very hard to keep his breathing steady.
“So bright,” Ren mumbled in slurred agreement. “I’m glad we have it the way it is now, though. I like it. It’s like - you gotta appreciate the things that you got, you know?”
“Yeah,” he said, although he wasn’t really following. The heat of Ren’s head pressed against his neck, his shoulder pushing into Martyn’s arm like he had no sense of space left over, was taking up far too much brain-RAM to process these starry-eyed, semi-poetic rambles.
“Yeah,” Ren repeated. And then, “I’m glad I got to know you, Martyn.”
“Mhm?”
“You’re so - you get me, yeah? Like nobody else in this - in this stupid city. I’m sorry, city, I don’t mean that, you’re beautiful. But you’re not as beautiful as this freakin’ warriors’ bond!”
Martyn laughed. By warriors he was largely referring to their time at cadets, clumsy tweens learning to tie knots and start fires in the woods by the motorway. Nothing so grand as the fantasy novels Ren had dedicated much of his youth to memorizing and obsessing over - but something, at least, that they could share.
It hit Martyn, again, that Ren was currently buried very thoroughly into his side. He hid the flush of his cheeks with another swig from the waterbottle. Maybe he could blame it on the alcohol if Ren asked.
He didn't seem to have any questions, though - just another lateral observation. "I liked those books. The Warriors. With the cats."
"Right."
And then he had nothing at all to say for another few seconds, ones that stretched themselves thin like sticking putty over a whole town's worth of emotion that never left its home in Martyn's heart. Ren was so warm - so lit up from the inside, drunk and delighted for it, the lamp in his soul fuelled for at least the rest of the blue-black evening they'd be spending here together. He was bright, like the light of a billion stars imprinted on a universe only just coming of age.
He was warm, and Martyn burned with it.
Of course, that was the point at which Ren gave up on trying to balance against Martyn's arm, and settled for landing headfirst in his lap.
God. Martyn thanked every blood vessel in his body for helping him keep it together.
"Pass it," Ren whined, making aimless grabby hands up in the air in front of Martyn's face. It took him a second to clock that Ren meant their waterbottle; once he did, though, he unblinkingly obliged. Ren managed to spill vodka down his face, even though they were literally drinking from a bottle with a sports lid and it should have been impossible for him to miss his mouth; Martyn chuckled again, briefly, before realising that every tiny shake of laughter pushed his body further up into Ren's head, and he decided that maybe he should stop laughing for the time being.
They made eye contact for a long, suspended moment when Ren brought the bottle down clumsily into the grass. It didn’t take long for Martyn to crack against it, eyes darting back up towards the stars instead. The view was a lot darker, sure - but it was beautiful, and a lot safer to sink into. (It would be so easy to lose himself in the eyes below him, in the warmth that radiated across his legs and made all his hairs stand up to think about for too long. Easy, sure, but so dangerous too. He might never be able to look away.)
“I’m gonna miss you, man,” said Ren.
Martyn kept his eyes on the night sky. “I’ll miss you too.”
“Like - you’re gonna go off and be successful, and get qualified, and… Don’t forget about me when you’re rich and famous.”
“Who says I’m gonna be rich and famous?”
“How could you not, dude? You’re gonna be a movie star.”
“That’s… really not how going into Film works.”
“Okay, a director star, then. Top of the line. People come from far and wide to watch your films.”
He bit his lip. There was something about this kind of exchange that always left a bitter taste in his mouth, although maybe that was the alcohol. Sure, he’d like to become a famous director, to get to work on the biggest projects with the biggest actors and take home the biggest paycheck, but… at the same time, having it all assured for him by the people he loved made it feel like a plastic-packaged dream rather than a solid career path. Ren especially; he had no plans at all for his own future, but when he extolled the virtues of Martyn’s it just reminded him of how impossible the whole thing could really end up being.
“And - don’t forget about me, was the point,” Ren continued. “When you’re off in… Cannes, or wherever they put the good movies. You send me an invite. I wanna be there when they put the Hollywood star in the floor.”
Martyn sighed. He just couldn’t deny Ren, as much as his realist side wanted to. “If that does happen, of course you can come.”
Ren let out an off-balanced whoop and swung a fist through the air that narrowly missed Martyn’s chin on the way down. “Dude - I love ya, man. I can’t wait to see what you do. For real.”
“Yeah.” I love you too. So much I wouldn’t be surprised if I started coughing flowers.
“Man - when everybody leaves, goes back to school, it’s gonna be a freakin’ ghost town. I wish it could stay like this forever.”
“That’d be nice.”
“Time,” he huffed, shifting in Martyn’s lap. He didn’t elaborate. Martyn nodded his agreement anyway.
The cold air and the sight of the stars combined with the floaty feeling that came with being so close to Ren, pressed into him by the weight of his exhaustion, and made him feel like he was up there in the vast expanse of space. Like they both were; tethered to nothing but each other, lost to gravity, like they could just disappear in a blink or the twinkle of a star and there’d be no trace of them left on earth.
Or maybe that was just the vodka as well - and he called Ren a poet.
But Ren was right, even as he was dramatic. Time was gonna do what time did, and if they wanted things to stay the way they were, tough. It would be nice to have that - to choose his best friend over life itself, to make some grand gesture of eternal devotion and defy the fates and run away into the void forever - of course it would. But this was just summer, and school and the real world did not have fantastical alternatives. This was not the edge of outer space. It was just a field containing exactly two British teenagers, one bottle of alcohol, and a lot of unspoken dreams.
Ren’s hand found Martyn’s, hot against the cold of the grass and the dirt, and squeezed it tight. Martyn squeezed back reflexively.
Neither of them said anything more till the moment was gone.