The Night Telescope – Part 2: Magellanic Clouds

By July, Julián had a key to the roof door. He had stopped pretending he was only there for the galaxies. He brought bread from the bakery on the corner, a bottle of cheap red, and once, a box of chocolates that melted in the warm air of his coat pocket.

"You're a terrible guest," said Mateo, licking chocolate off his thumb.

"I'm a wonderful guest. I bring snacks."

"You bring ruin to my diet."

"You haven't got a diet," said Julián. "You live on mate and stubbornness."

They lay on the cold roof under the blankets, the telescope creaking softly beside them, and watched the Magellanic Clouds drift across the sky like faint, fragile smoke. Mateo pointed out the shapes he had memorised as a boy. Julián gave the scientific names, and then, quietly, admitted he didn't remember them as well as he used to.

"Why not?" asked Mateo.

"Because I stopped looking up," said Julián. "After my brother died. I threw myself into the work and forgot the sky was even there."

Mateo turned his head on the blanket to look at him.

"Can I ask you something?" he said.

"Yes."

"Did you ever tell your family about your life? About who you are?"

Julián was quiet. Above them, a satellite crossed the Milky Way, a tiny, steady light.

"My mother knows," he said. "My father doesn't talk about it. My brother did. He was the one who told me the stars were the only thing that didn't ask questions. He was right, I suppose."

"Then he'd have liked me," said Mateo softly. "I ask too many."

Julián laughed, and turned to face him, their noses nearly touching.

"Can I ask you something back?"

"Yes."

"When your deadline comes, and I go back to Amsterdam, would you come with me? Not to leave Santiago. Just to see the other side of the sky, the one that's always cloudy and always grey, and find out if you can still cry at the stars there?"

Mateo's breath caught. "Yes," he said. "But I'll need a telescope, and you'll have to carry it."

"Deal," said Julián, grinning. "And I'll teach you to make the coffee."

"Terrible coffee?"

"The worst in Europe," said Julián, with enormous pride.

Mateo laughed, and then his face grew serious.

"Can I kiss you?" he asked, very softly. "Up here, under the Clouds, with the whole city asleep below?"

"Yes," said Julián, his voice low. "And if I say stop, we'll look at the Tarantula until I forget what I was going to say."

"Good," said Mateo, and leaned in.

He kissed him slowly, warm and certain, one hand resting on Julián's jaw, the blankets tangled between them. The kiss tasted of chocolate and cheap wine, sweet and unhurried. Above them the stars wheeled in their long, slow arcs, indifferent and beautiful.

When they parted, both of them were smiling.

"Green?" asked Mateo.

"Green," said Julián. "Very green. Now show me the Clouds again. I want to remember where I was when I stopped being afraid of the dark."

"You were on my roof," said Mateo, "under my telescope, being terrible at coffee."

"That's the best place in the universe," said Julián, and pulled him back down under the blanket, to watch the sky turn slowly towards morning.