If The Stars Could Kiss (All of Yours Perfects)

Entry Four: the stars embrace

Entry four: June 10th

Today I plan to finish the painting of Éris.

I have been drawing it out for a terrible amount of time, desperately holding on to more time with him. It's like I'm back in college falling almost head over heels for a boy who used to always sit by me in my physics class. I had thought he was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life and I'd been obsessed with him, always trying to find a way to be with him. Studying, lunch, parties. All my time went to him rather than my studies, making me start to fail some of my classes. My teachers started to get onto me, forcing MORE work on me, as if that helped anything.

I ended up not being able to focus on both school and my feelings for the boy so... I confessed to him.

He had been disgusted.

"I thought we were friends, Jon. Not... some fags." The boy has said, face contorted in disgust. He pushed past me, shaking his head. "Freak." I heard him mutter. I had only been able to stand in shock in the middle of the hallway with nothing else to do.

The next day, everyone knew.

I can't make that same mistake again, even if Éris seemed trustworthy, I would never, could never.

Besides, I haven't even known him long enough to qualify calling him a friend. And maybe I'll never even get to do that.

-*-

"Ah, Jon." Eris greeted me with a smile, glasses perched on the edge of his nose. He looked similar to my old history teacher, except much younger. "Did you sleep well?"

It was a common question he asked me and I always answered: "Fairly well." Before I dropped my satchel onto the floor and began to paint in a long silence.

But today, I wanted to try something different. I smiled back and nodded. "Very well. And you?"

Eris looked up in surprise, brows lifting. "The same as always." He answered surely, looking me up and down as if to make sure I was the same person. I couldn't say I was. Ever since coming to London, I'd been feeling different, as if the gray skies actually put me in a good mood every time I looked out a window.

I gestured to his telescope. I rarely asked him about his work, but today I was interested. "Have you found anything of significance? I've always wondered what you astronomers scribble down."

"Rarely anything of importance," Eris said with a small laugh, setting his notebook down onto his desk and beckoning me closer. I approached him hesitantly, standing side by side with him as he tapped a finger against the notebook page. I could barely read his handwriting, but some sentences were legible, such as; "star patterns" and "four moons circle Jupiter" but other than that, nothing seems noticeable to me.

"Honestly, our work is fairly easy. We look through a telescope and mark down what we think is important, watch the skies for any sort of threats or future threats, which usually we find nothing. We study the stars and find their patterns, constellations. We name them and then report to what you'd call the "headquarters" of science." He shrugged lazily. "Not much more than that and I can understand why some don't understand the fascination but..." He hesitated before turning to me, so close yet so far. His eyes were suddenly wide and excited. "There is something so captivating, so enthralling about space itself. We barely know a single thing about it. What makes the sun burn so hot? What makes all of these planets work? So many questions and never enough answers."

I had never heard anyone, especially not a man, talk about such things with the passion he had. He used his hands to talk, waving them around and shaking his head to get his point across. He was expressive, keeping the attention on him.

I grinned down at him. "You make me actually want to know these things."

He stopped, meeting my eyes. And once again, there was that... moment. Where everything was just still. Perfect. I did my best not to blink, not to breathe, anything to not rupture it. But soon enough, I'd have to do both.

But it was not me who broke it.

Red stretched across Eris's face, flushing madly as he broke eye contact, running a hand through his hair as he turned away from me. I felt slightly disappointed, especially when he spoke.

"I'm sorry. I must sound like a madman."

I shook my head, hiding my disappointment by fingering through one of his books absently. "Of course not. You sound like someone who loves what he does." I smiled. "Trust me, I am the same when it comes to my work. I just don't show it as much."

"I think you show it perfectly well through your paintings," said Eris.

"Thank you."

There was a beat of silence before he cleared his throat. I looked up at him, he was... blushing?

"I was just wondering... Jonathan... you see." He paused, thinking over his words. "You see, I'm not close with many people, and the one person I am friends with is in Los Angeles right now and won't be visiting anytime soon. I have no one." My brows furrowed, listening to him as he spoke as if he'd rehearsed over this speech many times before. "I was wondering if you'd like to be more than just acquaintances."

My heart skipped a beat, or it seemed so. I raised my brows in question. "More...?" I said aloud, tasting the word.

His eyes widened as he realized the suggestion behind his words. "Oh no, I don't mean as... well... I–" He could barely get a word out.

I laughed lightly, even though my stomach was curling in on itself. "No, no, I understand what you mean. As friends." I had to make sure to not stumble over those words. I forced a smile. "And I think that's a brilliant idea. I have no one either." Those words rang more true than anything I'd ever said before. Because I didn't have anyone, not anymore.

-*-

I finished the painting, although I didn't really want to, I did. Now that I was... officially? Friends with Eris, I had no need to stall. Friends spent time with each other, didn't they? I would have plenty of time over the next few months or however long I was going to be in little London to spend time with him, I could not waste that time over a painting.

"A picnic." He had said to me before I left. "London holds this huge one each year to welcome, usually they do it in the springtime but we had bad weather then. it' s not for another month, but... Would you like to attend with me?"

I didn't want to take those words out of the context they were in. "With me" as in friends, yet my head said so much more. What if "with me" could mean what I wanted it to mean, what I knew it could never mean.

I had to force those thoughts away and force a smile. "Of course, I'd love that." He had smiled back and I had left in a hurry before he could look into my eyes and read what my soul really felt.

Now, in the late hours, I sit at my desk in this little dim apartment that's just big enough to fit me and my entire miserable life but with a little room for more, and I wish, deep down, I wasn't who I was. That I could control who I loved, that it was a choice rather than a feeling that I can never escape, no matter what lengths a mother will go to help her child from this "sickness" she claims it is. Conversion therapy, pills, medicines that don't even work, drugs, alcohol, solitude... nothing ever works. And I can't escape it.

Have I willingly trapped myself in the belly of the beast, or have I always been in there since I took my first breaths, since I first became conscious?

I'm still searching for that answer, and although I want it to be, I don't think it's in Eris.