Archive of Our Own

“from what we cannot hold the stars are made” - w.s merwin

The human mind is a wonderful machine.

It is well-aware of its own existence and of its mechanisms. It knows; it is its primary function. The pursuit of knowledge, of ultimate, unquestionable, rational, mathematical knowledge. And yet, it is a quest the human mind knows to be doomed.

And the human mind is at peace with it.

It understood, long ago, that there are things it cannot understand, and it lives at peace with knowing it will never fulfil its mission. It will never uncover all the mysteries of the universe. It will never know the very essence and reason of its existence. And we have grown to see this failure as something of value, as something to be celebrated. We have grown to find happiness in ignorance, for there is a wonder in things that are beyond our comprehension, out of our reach, that cannot be controlled nor by might or by mind.

To Thomas, all of that was just a truckload of crap.

He had to admit; there was something beautiful about the unknown. About the idea of navigating a world that hasn’t confessed all of its secrets yet. There was something poetic about existing among mysteries that could never be solved, about accepting to be irreversibly incomplete in our understanding of ourselves and everything surrounding us.

But above all, there was something really, really frustrating about it.

He wasn’t presumptuous enough to call himself a scientist. After all, he was only in his first year at nursing school (after being politely rejected by all the medical schools of the country, which all politely thanked him for applying all the while telling him he was too stupid for them) and though the end of December was nearing, the number of classes he had attended didn’t quite reach a two-digits number. That didn’t mean he was a slacker. Of course not. He simply enjoyed dwelling in extracurricular activities a tiny bit too much. It was not really his fault if his little side project he had been working on since he was fifteen kept him up all night, every night, to the point he forgot what a bed looked like. This little project he was working on, he was sure of it, would change the world as we knew it. This little project was the future, and the future was now. His studies could wait, the future couldn’t.

Or maybe it could wait until the end of his full-blown panic attack.

“It’s just a time machine,” he said out loud, staring down the sink in Sonya’s luxurious bathroom. “What could possibly go wrong, huh? How could time travel go wrong, huh?” 

His knuckles had turned white, fingers desperately clutching the porcelain to keep him standing. To keep him sane. How could he have thought it was a good idea, for even a minute, to build a time machine?

But it was too late now. He couldn’t throw years of hard work down the drain out of cowardice. He couldn’t do that to his uncle, Vince, who had let him use his garage to build his contraption. He couldn’t do that to Minho, who had helped him every step of the way. And he couldn’t do that to humanity, not after promising her greatness. Not after striving for grandeur. Not after flirting with the impossible.

It was his duty, as a human being, to always aim for the stars.

All he could do now was pray he wouldn’t deviate into outer space.

He splashed cold water on his face again, let some of it run down his nape and under his sweatshirt, and left the light on in the bathroom as he stepped out, just in case. Beacons always help.

In the vast manor of the Isaacs estate, everything seemed frozen in time. It had intrigued Thomas on his first visit, years ago, when the girl had invited him over to study together. An eighteenth-century mansion that had survived the passage of decades, that had stood tall in the face of modernity, and that nwas now about to witness the future. Like every manor, it reminded Thomas of a maze, with endless corridors and rooms that never ended, new elements you discovered each day, even when you thought it couldn’t surprise you anymore.

Like the door to the attic that he had always known to be closed and locked, and that was tonight wide open, letting the moon shine through and down onto him like a spotlight.

As we’ve established before, Thomas was a man of science, not of faith. What everyone else would have seen as a sign from the gods, as the moon calling for him, as a supreme being telling him something was waiting for him in that mysterious room, he saw as progress. He saw as discovery. But whatever the reason was, the result was the same. Curiosity led him upstairs.

When he was seven, Thomas’s dad took him to a planetarium. It was then that he learnt that humans knew nothing of the world, and that the world doesn’t intend on letting them know any soon. Back then, he had felt insignificant, facing the immensity of the universe, and he didn’t like how dizzy it made him. That’s why he had done everything in his power to never feel that way again, to never let the universe outsmart him again. But upon entering this room, he realised one dreadful thing.

He had failed.

The first thing he noticed – and it was difficult not to – was the glass ceiling, as if the sky had invited itself into the circle-shaped room without knocking. Wherever he looked, stars were above him, watching his every move if he dared so much as to breathe, an unexpectedly calming presence where he would have thought it to be oppressive. The moon was almost full, full with a soothing aura he could have bathed in for hours, and painted the room in a light that was not meant to be described by words, only by quiet heartbeats that finally, finally steadied.

Under the stars was a galaxy of clutter, little everythings lying around and books piled up high like rockets breaching through the sky, a table crumbling under heaps of knick-knacks, and somewhere against a wall, a bed, unmade, that screamed of sleepless nights and dreams too big to be restrained by sheets.

It was Thomas’s fingers that saw them first, the writings on the walls, the numbers, the calculations, and his eyes touched them second, with the excitation of a child unwrapping a Christmas gift that isn’t even his, just for the mischief of it.

There wasn’t an inch of the walls that wasn’t covered in equations and shapes and thoughts, written to never be said out loud, kept in the secrecy of a room he was convinced he was the first to visit in decades.

wish i could go there written next to something that appeared to be coordinates.

pretty next to an arrow pointing up to Andromeda.

what’s beyond? under a drawing of Jupiter.

Some of them were less existential; don’t forget to feed the horses or page 47 page 99 page 138 page 201 page 250 page 284 or amelia? josephine? caroline?

There were quotes he didn’t recognise but felt he should, If all else perished, and he remained, I should still continue to be; and if all else remained, and he were annihilated, the universe would turn to a mighty stranger or Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all. Sentences in French he couldn’t read and words in German he couldn’t understand

He felt like an intruder, wrapped in the pages of a diary he was never meant to read, in the soul of someone else, and yet at home, meant to be here and to experience the mind of a stranger who didn’t seem that strange, struck by a feeling of déjà-vu he simply could shake off.

When Sonya walked into the room, he didn’t notice her at first. He was too caught up in the solar system mapped out in chalk on the hardwood floor to see her sit on the bed, one leg under the other.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she said, forcing the hands of the clock to spin again.

“What is this room?” he asked, eyes lingering on Saturn.

“This,” she said, looking up at the sky. “is Newt’s room. My great-great-great-granduncle.”

His gaze jumped to Venus. “How come I’ve never seen it?

“Usually we keep the door closed,” she explained, looking down at Venus too. “But we open it when Christmas comes.”

He tilted his head to the side. “Why?”

“It’s tradition.”

There was more to it, but Thomas was not sure if she would allow him to push it. He watched her grab a framed picture from the nightstand – a detail he hadn’t even noticed in the harmonious mess of the room – and sat by her side.

The boy in the picture was the spitting image of the girl beside him; blond hair and dark eyes that could make you shiver with a single glance; a witty, malicious smile that revealed the faintest of dimples, a universe encapsulated in a single being, remains of his soul bleeding through the small photograph.

“You never told me about him,” Thomas breathed out quietly, as if afraid his words would wake up the boy in the picture.

“We don’t talk about him.” she simply stated, and once again, Thomas felt it was better not to push the subject.

In the end, he didn’t have to.

“He disappeared. On Christmas Night, 1890. Right before my great-great-grandma Amelia was born” Sonya spoke each of her words slowly, weighing their meanings and their implications, and Thomas could tell it was the first time she was telling that story herself. “He was 21.”

“Oh,” he let out, surprised. He himself was twenty, and often forgot how quickly life could be amputated from a young mind, even more so at the time.

He expected the silence after that revelation to be awkward, from them to sink into a special kind of melancholia impossible to explain, but he found himself finding comfort in the unspoken, in the private universe of a man who was no more, led by a woman who carried a piece of him within her.

And yet, something was wrong, disturbingly so, and it took him a few minutes to pinpoint exactly what, but once he did, he couldn’t think of anything else.

“Wait, when did you say he died?”

“1890,” she repeated, stressing each number individually, anchoring them in his mind.

“And, this room, it hasn’t been touched since, right?”

“It hasn’t.” She kept her answers short, but they spoke volume to him.

“That’s not possible,” he thought to himself, but he must have spoken louder than intended, for Sonya slowly turned towards him.

“And why is that?” she asked, but the sly smile on her face betrayed her. She already knew the answer to her own question, she simply needed him to come to his own conclusions.

“Well, it’s the solar system, right?” Thomas chuckled, nervously, gesturing to the large drawing under them.

“Yup.”

“All of it.”

“Yup.”

“Pluto included.” So that’s what it was about.

“Yes.”

“It’s not possible,” he stated again, and it only made her grin grow bigger.

“Or is it?”

Or is it?

Sonya was a woman who didn’t believe in easy answers, Thomas knew that much. She was one to doubt the obvious, one to trust the unpredictable. She was one for zodiac signs and lithotherapy, one who mastered whatever existed in the gap between our world and another. He had let her do his tarot reading once, and though he loved her like a sister, he was left so unphased he could barely remember what she had told him. Fables, that was what it had all sounded like to him.

But now, maybe for the first time, her peculiar universe had caught his attention.

“When Newt disappeared,” she began, and stood, paced the room in slow circles, following the axis of Mars. “Some scribbles and drawings in his drawers and the writings on his walls suggested that he had discovered a new planet. He called it Pluto. No one took it seriously at the time. Most people thought he had lost his mind spending too much time alone, contemplating the stars. He had always been the odd one out, after all; the black sheep of the family.”

She stopped, having reached Mars, and stood on the red planet; and Thomas guessed she must have done it more than once, trying to decipher the secrets locked in this room.

“But decades later, Pluto was discovered,” she resumed. “Some Americans, since they always claim to discover everything. And all at once, everything changed. Grandma, she spent her whole life trying to prove that her grand-uncle had discovered it years prior.”

“And?”

Sonya shrugged bitterly. “There was no way to prove all those scribbles date back to his lifetime. The entire scientific community agreed that she was lying and simply looking for attention. She fought for decades, but again, everyone else thought she was insane.”

Something on the unmade bed caught Thomas’s eye, something that looked strangely out of place in this little cosmos he had just breached into. He didn’t know why, but he felt he could hear the small trinket calling his name. It was nothing special at first glance, a simple necklace with a small capsule as a pendant, but his fingers twitched in anticipation, and before he even realised it, he took it in his hand and shoved it in his pocket.

“You said he disappeared,” he said quietly, always afraid of the weight of his words. “What happened to him?”

“There are two theories,” Sonya explained, her voice just as careful. “Grandma always said that, if Newt knew about Pluto, it’s because an alien told him.”

Maybe in another context, he would have laughed. He knew he would have. Aliens; now that was something he didn’t believe in. How could he? It went against everything he knew about the galaxy. It was something that put everything back into question, and he couldn’t let that happen and mess up with his mind. He couldn’t. So he usually laughed the possibility away, far into a corner of his mind he could ignore, tried to will it away. But this time, he didn’t, he couldn’t, for the simple reason that a boy who had died over a century ago had decided to turn the tables and force him to face the unknown.

“And one day, when that alien decided it was time, it came to abduct him.” Sonya concluded, looking at the stars as if expecting Newt to look back at her from somewhere up there. “From the day he disappeared, his sister Elizabeth, my great-great-grandmother, she kept the door open, hoping that, if he ever came back and found this bedroom waiting for him, he would finally feel welcome home.”

“He didn’t? Feel welcome, I mean,” Thomas frowned.

“From what I’ve gathered, there was something different about him. He never felt like he belonged. Felt more at home among the stars than among his peers. He was a very secretive man, and he left with all his secrets.”

It was impossible, Thomas thought just minutes before, to relate to someone who had lived so long before you, to feel like you could understand someone you had never met, and yet, though Thomas had learned about Newt’s existence only minutes ago, he felt he was now a central element of his system, and that all of a sudden, all things started orbiting around him, an person he knew nothing about, yet felt he knew all too well.

 But one question lingered, and Thomas knew he had to ask it if he ever wanted to move on from this moment, if he ever wanted his life to make sense again, to stop this weird feeling from flirting with his brain.

“What is the second theory?”

And he could see that Sonya was dreading this question though she had prompted it herself, and as he thought, it only added more mystery to the matter.

“He killed himself. Jumped from a bridge and was never found.”

Her tone said it all; it was a lie that had turned into truth from being said too often, an hoax created so people would look the other way, so the laws of the universe wouldn’t be questioned, so logic would keep ruling, and only minds curious enough to seek real answers would see clear through it. She did, and so did he, both in their own ways. Because she loved the unknown, and he dreaded it.

“Grandma even had this crazy theory that he might still be alive, after all these years, since time goes by slower on other planets. That he could still come back, and still be as young as when he left. That’s why we still keep the door open.”

“It’s a beautiful story,” he said, hoping it would cheer her up.

“We should go back down,” she sighed in return. “Minho is going to think you’re second-guessing it.”

“I’m second-guessing it,” he scoffed.

“Perfect, I would be worried for your sanity if you didn’t,” she said as she stepped out of the room, and Thomas followed her diligently, already missing the unheimlich sensation the ghosts of Newt’s room had plunged him into.

“You’re not going to stop me?” he wondered out loud as they walked down the stairs to the garden.

“Thomas, contrary to what it looks like, I don’t believe in magic,” she chuckled. “I think the only thing you’re going to amount to is breaking a vintage car.”

“So you think it’s not going to work?”

“Let’s say I won’t be surprised if it doesn’t,” she corrected with a cheeky smile.

The sad thing was, deep down, Thomas agreed. Though he had dedicated much of his life to this project, he knew that his chances of success were slim. If it were that easy, someone would have done it by now. He wasn’t the first one who dreamed to master time and space, and he wouldn’t be the last, but he had an inkling. As strange as it may seem for a man who worshipped science above all else, Thomas believed in destiny; in the fact that, somehow, everything is already written and waiting to happen. And he knew that his destiny was to climb into this time machine, wherever or whenever it would lead him.

Outside, the world was quiet, unaware of what it was about to experience. All great things must take place at night, Thomas always thought; there is too much distraction during the day, too much noise, too much everything. He’d rather have the stars as audience anyway. The stars, and Minho.

“You told me you wouldn’t chicken out this time!” his best friend said as he finally reached the garden.

“I didn’t chicken out, Min!”

“Thomas, Thomas,” Minho sighed, throwing an arm around Thomas’s shoulder. “No matter how fucked up your bladder is, I’m quite sure it doesn’t require you seventeen minutes to take a pee break.”

“Just shut it and let’s get it over with,” he groaned.

“Ay, ay, captain!”

What a curious sight it was for the Moon to see three figures, two boys and a girl, approaching a vintage car clumsily parked in the gardens of an Antebellum mansion.

“I can’t believe you guys committed to the DeLorean,” Sonya scoffed, though visibly amused by the situation.

“If you're gonna build a time machine into a car, why not do it with some style?” Minho quoted cheerfully, and he opened the front door wide up in a single gesture. “Milady, your carriage awaits!”

“If I die, all my money goes to Bark,” Thomas bit back as he sat behind the steering wheel. “You get nothing.”

“Sure thing,” Minho teased, slamming the car door and locking Thomas in. “Don’t forget your seatbelt!”

“Be safe!” he heard Sonya shout before he pressed the gas pedal, aiming for the future and the past at the same time.

It takes him a little while to realise he has hit a tree.

Vince is gonna kill me, he thinks at first, for he is probably going to have to work until he is 90 if he wants to have enough money to repair that car now. Sonya is gonna kill me, he thinks second, for he has just taken down a tree probably older than her most precious family heirlooms. Minho is gonna kill me, he thinks at last, because he has just screwed up their one chance to travel to the past.

He stumbles out of the car in a cloud of smoke and a mess of thoughts, grateful that he can apparently still stand on both legs and hasn’t broken his ribcage in the process. A quick glance in the rearview mirror and he looks mostly unscattered, though dishevelled and visibly shaken.

“Min? Sonya?”

It’s the wind that answers him, colder than he remembers it from just a few minutes ago. They are probably inside already, he figures, calling an ambulance and cursing themselves for letting him do something so reckless. Something so stupid. Something so pointless.

So he walks back to the house, with nothing in his pockets but his shame, his apologies, his phone and his regrets.

When he reaches the front door, he is surprised to find it locked. He is also surprised to find it with that lock, something that calls for a key that wouldn’t fit on a keychain. He picks up a rock and breaks the knob, and hopes Sonya will forgive him from breaking into her home – he mostly hopes she will be too happy to see him alive and breathing to care.

Inside, all is dark and quiet, as if the place was empty of all its inhabitants. No Sonya crying on the phone with a 9-1-1 operator, no Minho punching a wall in frustration. His left hand feels around for the lightswitch where he knows it to be, but the wall is flat under his fingers and confusion only grows in his head as a ghastly sensation of uncanniness enters his brain.

Maybe he hit his head harder than he thought, for despite the darkness, he can see that nothing is in its place. Furniture has waltzed in the room and landed somewhere else, curtains have been taken off and changed, hunting trophies hang where abstract art paintings used to be. All the light comes from the chimney, which Thomas specifically knows is never to be lit, for it is too old and could burn down the whole property.

It doesn’t seem all that threatening though. Curiously, it brings him some comfort in this alien setting. He crouches for a moment by the fire, takes in the welcome heat, tries to make sense of what is happening. A wild thought crosses his mind, but he doesn’t dare to believe it, doesn’t dare to let himself dream again of childish fantasies. He doesn’t–

Click!

Thomas barely has the time to turn around before he is faced with a shotgun, cocked and ready to be triggered, just inches from his chest.

“Oh-Oh fuck– Wait!” he panicks, clumsily standing up.

“Give me one good reason not to shoot.”

He has trouble seeing his assailant in the darkness of the manor; all that the flames reveal is porcelaine hands holding a deadly weapon.

“Please, don’t! I’m–”

“What are you doing here?” the boy insists, because it is definitely a boy, around his age probably, who is one finger away from taking him out.

“Wait! I can explain!”

“Oh really?” the mysterious man scoffs, audibly unimpressed. “I will give you three seconds. One…”

“Wait! I promise this is not what it looks like–”

“Two…”

“Please! Please don’t–”

“Thr–”

“I come from the future!”

Once the words are out, it all starts making sense. His subconscious had already worked it out, but saying it out loud slowly makes him realise all the implications of it. No Minho, no Sonya, no lightswitch, no abstract paintings. He has done it, travelled to the past, landed at the same place but not at the same time.

He has done it.

Before him, the barrel of the gun lowers slightly. It gives him just enough time to properly look at the man holding it, the man who was ready to shoot him right here and there.

He recognises the golden hair first, though it almost looks brown in the night, he can tell it is wheat under the sunlight. It is all too familiar, the chocolate eyes and the boyish features, rendered adult by a serious frown and the hint of a devilish smirk . What were the chances, he wonders, that of all the years when he could have landed in, destiny chose this one, where the first person he would encounter is the one he has learnt about just a few minutes ago, and yet can’t get out of his mind.

“That’s not possible.”

His voice is deeper than Thomas imagined, warmer than the fire behind him, and yet feeble, like his hands as they try to strengthen their hold on the shotgun. It is a hopeless attempt. Thomas’s words have planted the seed of doubt in his mind, of wonder, the sudden fascination that Thomas hoped to trigger. He shot back with a deadlier weapon than any gun.

“But it is, and you know it,…don’t you?”

The seed grows and so does the boy’s confusion, the knot of his brows only getting tighter as the gun lowers. He is fighting an inner battle that Thomas does not intend to let him win.

“You’re name’s Newt, right?” he asks, knowing the answer, making eyebrows rise in astonishment.

“How do you know that?”

“I’m friends with your great-great-grandniece.”

The gun almost drops to the floor at his words.

“My…What?”

“She told me about you,” Thomas continues, hoping he will distract Newt long enough to make him forget about his maladroit breaking and entering.

“Alright, then.” Newt swallows thickly, raising the gun again, and his voice is less feeble when he asks, “When do you come from?”

“2022.” Thomas replies matter-of-factly, as if the barrel wasn’t tickling his shirt, and just as he expected, that simple number makes the seed grow even bigger.

“That’s–” Newt’s quivering lips let out.

“Crazy, I know,” Thomas chuckles slightly, still keeping a worried eye on the cannon. “Trust me, I can hardly believe it myself. I didn’t expect the time machine to work, to be totally honest”

A few seconds of silence precede something that Thomas didn’t expect to hear. A laugh. Subtle, at first; but as Newt’s grin grows bigger and more malicious, he realises the rules of the game have changed. Newt is back at being the hunter, and he is back at being hunted.

“...Prove it.”

It is Thomas’s eyes that widen this time.

“What?”

Newt’s smile dug a small dimple in the middle of his cheek, one that didn’t appear on the photograph where Thomas first saw him, one that gives life and character to the picture-perfect Victorian boy. Cheeky; it is the best way Thomas can describe his attitude, just when the accidental time-traveller thought nothing could surprise him anymore.

“If what you say is true, prove it,” Newt demands, daringly. “It should not be so hard, should it?”

“Could you…maybe…put the gun down first…please?” Thomas asks.

“...No,” Newt answers with a playful shrug.

“O-Okay, uhm…” Thomas struggles to say, baffled. He had considered all the possibilities, but never did he think that Newt would somehow take advantage of the situation, that he would find it funny and play around with him. His smile is almost deranged, but in an odd way that doesn’t make Thomas feel as threatened as he soundly should be. The bedroom should have warned him, though, that the man living in it was a peculiar being, and that he was to expect something wicked to happen if he ever met him.

“...So? I’m waiting!” Newt cockily urges, taking a step forward, pressing the barrel harder against Thomas’s ribs.

“Errr…I…”

Ding!

The sound makes Newt jump, and Thomas gulps, half-expecting him to pull the trigger by accident, but nothing happens. Newt’s eyes are attracted like moths to the blue light that emanates from his pocket, that eerily lights up in their corner of the room in an artificial shade.

Slowly, as not to startle Newt any more, Thomas searches in his pocket for the object in question, for his golden opportunity for an explanation. The screen lights up again as he shows it to Newt.

“This…is a telephone…,” he explains slowly.

“Do you really think I am stupid?” Newt growls, apparently unconvinced as he shoves Thomas backward with his gun, almost making him fall into the open fire, and placing his finger back on the trigger.

“No, I swear– PLEASE DON’T PLE– IT’S GONNA BE A GIRL!” Thomas desperately begs, closing his eyes in fear, already feeling his insides explode.

But nothing happens. No bullet is shot, and only the steady crackling of the fire echoes in the room. Tentatively, he opens his eyes.

The barrel faces the ground, and if Newt is still holding on to the weapon, it is only to make sure he doesn’t fall apart himself.

“...What did you say?” he mutters, all defiance gone and vanished.

“Your sister’s baby…,” Thomas repeats. “It’s gonna be a girl. And you’ve been thinking about names. Amelia. Josephine. Caroline.”

“How do you know?” Newt chokes out, his wide eyes reflecting the fireplace as they glisten.

“I’ve seen them,” Thomas explains. “Written on your wall in your bedroom.”

Part of him feels guilty for the obvious distress he is causing to Newt, as the speechless, bewildered boy tries to make his brain compute. “...I haven’t written them yet. I was thinking about doing it when you…”

His sentence is left unfinished. Instead, he walks to the wall where he hangs back the shotgun from where he picked it up, under two others of the same calibre exposed proudly in the living-room like family pictures. He remains still for a moment, visibly gathering himself. Thomas watches him from behind as he breathes in and out, slowly, forcing his heartbeat to steady, before turning back to the intruder.

“You’re really from the future?” he asks, somewhere between hopeful and surprised.

“Yes,” Thomas nods, relieved he wasn’t skinned alive at his first encounter with Sonya’s ancestors.

“...Well, at least that explains the peculiar clothing.”

“W…Wh–” Thomas babbles, taken aback. “What’s wrong with my clothes?”

It is back as quickly as it left, that mischievous smile that no picture could capture. It is a shame, Thomas thinks instantly, that this part of Newt hasn’t made it to posterity, and something within him is glad to be among the lucky few who get to experience this side of the man.

“I hope you are aware that you look ridiculous in those rags,” Newt grins, causing Thomas to puff in mock-offence.

But two can play this game, and Thomas is one hell of a player.

“That’s rich coming from a guy wearing a ruffled shirt!” he strikes back.

And just like that, Newt bursts into laughter, a laugh so bright and vibrant it could rival the sun, lighting up the whole room by itself.

There are happy tears pearling in Newt’s eyes when he finally catches his breath, leading Thomas to believe the boy in question hasn’t laughed in years and has long forgotten how good it feels.

“Is this really how people dress in the twenty-first century?” Newt retorts, still audibly giddy. Thomas can’t blame him; he himself can’t seem to wash away the grin plastered on his face.

He isn’t sure of when they got so close, or who took the steps that led them to be face to face, but now Newt is fiddling with the string of his hoodie and he feels a funny warmth in his chest.

“Granted I don’t have the best taste in fashion, but yeah,” he replies, and the bold part of him takes over when he arches an eyebrow and asks, “Surprised? Disappointed? Shocked?”

“I’m wondering what wrong turn couturiers took to let that happen,” Newt remarks. “Surely they must have gone rogue to produce something of the sort. And of that colour!”

“What’s wrong with purple?”

“Everything!”

Another round of shameless laughter. It shouldn’t be that easy. It shouldn’t feel that natural to joke with a boy from the past, to banter with a ghost that has come back to life, but the conversation flows between them as if they had known each other all their lives. It’s like two old souls finding their way back to each other after years apart, unaware that they were looking for their other half.

“It’s warm, though. And comfortable. You should try it someday.” Thomas argues.

Maybe it was the wrong thing to say, because he isn’t sure he can handle the way Newt’s fingers are now playing with the fabric to feel it, how his hands linger on the collar of the sweatshirt, dangerously close to his collarbone. Thomas almost forgets that, mere minutes earlier, the same hands were holding a gun pointed in his direction. Porcelain, he thought back then. Would they break, if he were to hold them?

“Maybe…” Newt lets himself fantasise. “Would you be kind enough to let me try it on?”

“N-Now?” Thomas stutters.

“Or will I have to wait until 2022 to get that pleasure?”

Testing the waters, word after word. Newt is nothing like he expected him to be, has nothing to do with the cliché of the proper Victorian gentleman. He may look the part, but he is definitely playing by different rules. Maybe that’s what Sonya meant when she said he was a black sheep among his peers, a man ahead of his time in more ways than one. He is bold and unashamed, far from the conventions of his time, enticingly so.

“Newt, is that you?”

Sonya, Thomas thinks at first, because it is her; or at least her spitting image that walks into the room holding a candelabra, dressed in a gown that’s probably worth a fortune, though does a poor job at hiding the rather large bump on her belly.

“Lizzy, why are you up? You should be in bed!” Newt scolds her tenderly.

“I did not know we were expecting visitors,” the so-called Lizzy says, blatantly ignoring Newt. “What is your name, sir, if you don’t mind me asking?”

“T-Thomas!” he stutters, still stunned by the resemblance between his friend and what appears to be her distant grandmother. “Thomas…Edison,” he adds, like an idiot.

“Oh,” she replies quietly. “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, sir Edison.”

“Thomas is a friend,” Newt claims abruptly, probably to stop her from asking any more questions.

“A…friend?” And even though the context is quite confusing, she sounds more surprised than she should be.

“Yes,” Next confirms.  “A fellow astronomer. We met when I attended that lecture in Boston last month.”

Thomas isn’t sure what conclusions Lizzy is drawing, but a knowing smile appears on her lips.

“I see,” she murmurs, sly as a fox.

“He…agreed to help me in my studies, so I invited him to come and stay here for a few days.”

“Hence his arrival late in the middle of the night, behind Father’s back?” Lizzy teases, and Thomas watches, amused, as Newt is beaten at his own game.

“...Yes,” he gives in after stuttering.

“I like to drive at night!” Thomas says, stepping in to Newt’s rescue

It doesn’t fail at catching Sonya’s attention. “You drive your own carriage?”

“...Yes?”

“Oh, that’s delightful!” she comments.

“Thomas and I were just about to retire for the night,” Newt says, obviously trying to put an end to this growingly-awkward conversation.

“And will our guest need to have his own apartments prepared, or will that not be necessary?”

Thomas is pretty sure he is imagining the way Lizzy waggles her eyebrows at her brother, and the way Newt’s cheeks instantly grow crimson. However, there is no possible way Newt’s hand grabbing his is the product of his imagination. Before he knows it, he is dragged out of the room and up a flight of stairs.

“What weird clothes…” he thinks he hears Lizzy saying, as he and Newt nearly run to the top floor of the mansion.

Thomas notices that, in the end, not much has changed in over a hundred years. Some things are still in the same place as he remembers them to be in the future, that green armchair between the second and third floor, the gildings on the bannister, and yet everything seems changed, with Newt’s hand in his.

“Is Thomas Edison your real name?” Newt asks, stopping brutally, his hand on the knob of his bedroom door.

“No,” he admits. Of course Newt knows who Thomas Edison is, he should have guessed.

“Then why did you say it was?”

“I don’t know? I panicked?” Thomas says, because, to be perfectly honest, he isn’t sure himself.

A new puff of laughter comes out of Newt’s mouth. “You panicked? Because of your name?”

“Does it never happen to you?”

A smirk appears, and the door opens. “You’re a weird one, Future Boy.”

For the second time that evening, Thomas enters the room in the attic, and as it turns out, Sonya wasn’t lying. Everything is exactly how it was just half an hour ago, or should he say in a hundred and thirty-two years. Same piles of books, same messy handwriting on the wall. Only a small detail catches his attention, the one difference between the original and its reflection.

“You haven’t added Pluto yet?”

Newt frowns, tilting his head to the side. “Pluto?”

“Yeah, Pluto,” Thomas repeats, gesturing towards the large fresco under his feet. “You know, the ninth planet of the solar system?”

“...There’s a ninth planet?”

“Yeah, right after Neptune,” he insists. “But you’ve figured that out already, right?”

He expects a response that never comes. Newt is agape before him, as if frozen in place by the revelation. Standing in the middle of the room, in place of the Sun, he witnesses in stupefaction as all he knows is put back into question. He is king of a universe he has himself mapped out, but realises he has left one of his most precious subjects out.

“There’s a ninth planet…,” he whispers to himself, and Thomas almost feels guilty for bringing that kind of tumult into Newt’s quiet life. He only realises now what a stupid idea it might have been, to interact with someone from the past. Of course he has seen films – where do you think he got the inspiration for the DeLorean from? – and if there is one thing they should have taught him, it is to make sure not to influence the past in any way. Newt’s bewildered expression speaks for itself; he has kickstarted the chaos theory, and it is only going to go downwards from there. It might be a drop in the ocean, to let Newt know about Pluto, but that very drop might cause the flooding that takes Thomas’s entire reality down.

“Thomas?” a pleading voice calls, bringing him out of his spiralling thoughts.

“Uhm?”

“Tell me more about the future.”

He is the one to draw it, eventually, Pluto’s orbit on Newt’s bedroom floor, after he’s told Newt about planes and computers. The damage is already done anyway. Between Pluto and the cellphone, Newt already knows too much. There is no way to take it back now, so he better make the best of it while he can, before the time paradox catches up with him. He tells him about hamburgers too, and movies. He tells him about so many movies. He tells him about washing machines and Michael Jackson, women’s suffrage and the Beatles, roller skates and One Direction, and Newt listens, spellbound, hooked on each word that comes out of Thomas’s mouth.

“Was it really a telephone, the object you showed me earlier?” he asks eventually, once they’ve both collapsed on Newt’s bed.

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I simply struggle to understand how it can be. Where is the wire?”

So he tells Newt about satellites, and his eyes glisten as he learns that humans send machines to orbit around Earth. He asks if people have ever been on one, and almost squeals of happiness when he learns that, yes, humans have been to space.

“It can play music, too,” Thomas adds, fidgeting with his smartphone, and just as he thought, Newt gasps, amazed.

“Will you make it play some?”

Of course I will, and it should terrify him, the way he is willing to comply with any of Newt’s requests. But he gets drunk off those wide chocolate eyes staring at him like he’s the most enchanting thing there is, like he could turn anything into gold with his fingertips.

He plugs in a pair of earbuds he finds in his pocket and hands one to Newt, who stares at it like it’s the strangest thing in the world.

“It goes in your ear, like that,” he explains, putting the earbud in Newt’s ear himself, and tucks a strand of hair behind his ear in the process, and lets his fingers brush Newt’s jawline, go down his neck.

Only a few songs are saved on his phone from his Spotify library – to which he can, for obvious reasons, not connect – and though Newt would probably be awestruck by any of them, Thomas feels the need to offer him what’s best. He doesn’t know how much time they have left before space-time collapses on them, and he never wants the dazzling joy on Newt’s face to fade, so he picks a song that makes him feel eternal and presses play.

Newt lays on his side, and Thomas mirrors him. The sun and the moon, finally meeting. It’s the kind of eclipse you come across only once in a lifetime, if you’re lucky enough.

Newt isn’t subtle, and if he thinks Thomas doesn’t notice the way his gaze wanders in fascination all over him, from cheeks to shoulder, from eyes to lips, staring, enraptured at each of his moles, then he is a fool, an endearing one. Thomas can’t blame him; it is not everyday that an alien flips your life upside down. He himself can’t take his eyes off Newt, the little scar on his cheek that holds so many secrets he is dying to discover, the tempting cupid-bow and peach-tinted lips that go with it, the stars in his eyes that put to shame those above them.

He falls asleep under Newt’s scrutinising gaze; started the day in 2022 and finished it 1890, and he is a bit less worried about it than he probably should be. Maybe the universe has decided not to punish him for messing up with its laws, and even if it has, being stuck by Newt’s side for the rest of eternity doesn’t seem that terrible a sentence. He hears Newt’s heartbeats steady alongside his, and the night welcomes them in, congratulating them for their unexpected discovery.

Somewhere, destiny is watching them.

“So, this is your time machine?”

“Yep,” Thomas nods, himself surprised by the mess he made. In the morning light, the damage looks even more dreadful. The front of the car is barely recognisable, and the tree is bent to an almost right angle.

“Oh,” Judging by the intonation, it is miles away from what Newt imagined. “An interesting design, for certain.”

“I have to find a way to repair it, so I can go back,” Thomas says, attempting to open the bonnet.

“Go back?” Newt asks, a bit disconcerted.

“Well, yeah,” Thomas answers, unfazed. “My friends must be worried sick looking for me.”

“Yes, of course.”

When Thomas glances back up at Newt, he sees him looking down at his feet, signature frown darkening his face. He almost looks like a child there, and if Thomas didn’t know better, he would think he made his new friend upset, but he can’t figure out why. All he knows is that he hates seeing Newt like that, looking like the light within him has died.

“Will you help me?” he tries, hoping that the prospect of working on a time machine will cheer him up.

Newt bites his lips before answering, “Naturally.”

But Thomas can see the sadness behind the strands of wheat hair, and the confusion too, as if Newt was surprised by his own reaction.

“Newt…?”

“We should move it to the stables,” he states coldly. “To make sure Father doesn’t see it.”

They move it to the stables, the best they can, to make sure Newt’s father doesn’t see it. Thomas hadn’t even noticed there were horses on the property, for when he comes from, there are none. Should he tell Newt that the stables are to be turned into a music studio for Sonya’s amateur band? Surely he would like that.

Newt gathers tools, and they are all pretty archaic considering the car they are working on, but they make do. They spend the whole day trying to piece the machine back together, one screw after the other. It isn’t that bad a setting, Thomas thinks. He can hear the horses neighing, and the scent of fresh hay makes him realise how little time he usually spends outside. At some point during the afternoon, he notices a girl with long black hair staring at them from the other side of the wooden building. She looks strangely out of place with her high boots, tight trousers and cunning smile.

“This is Brenda,” Newt informs him. “Our horsekeeper.”

When Newt excuses himself to go to the bathroom, Thomas decides to talk to her. He doesn’t really know why, but he finds himself caught in her gravitational field. There is something intriguing about Brenda that he cannot seem to grasp, and his instincts tell him that, if he wants to unfold all the secrets of this household, that is where he needs to start.

“Hi, I’m Thomas,” he simply states when he catches her attention.

“So I’ve heard,” she replies as she scrapes a horse’s hooves clean. “Sir Newton’s friend from Boston.”

“News travels fast,” Thomas chuckles slightly. Something about the young horsekeeper tells him he can trust her, something that reminds him of a long-lost friend or a forgotten sibling. He wonders for a wild moment if she, too, has a doppelgänger for descendant, for her face looks oddly familiar. Or maybe it is yet another coincidence, the universe playing tricks on him to avenge itself.

“The only secrets Lady Elizabeth is good at keeping are her own,” Brenda sighs, letting go of the horse’s leg. “Like who put that bun in her oven, for example.”

“Nobody knows?”

“She won’t tell,” she shrugs. “Her father goes around saying she was engaged to some lord back in England who died in a shipwreck by the coast of Spain. The poor girl was so devastated with grief they chose to leave the country and start over in America.”

“You don’t seem to believe it’s true,” Thomas notes, and Brenda stands to face him. There is defiance in her glare, as if she was warning him that, whatever she was about to say, it would change his perception of his hosts forever.

“Because it isn’t. I just know it.”

Thomas probably wouldn’t have given her theory much credit, had she left it as it was, but Brenda probably finds his troubled expression too entertaining to be left alone. So she leans in, close to his ear, and whispers,

“If they came to America, it’s not because of her, it’s because of him.”

“Because of Newt?” Thomas frowns, feeling a lump in his stomach. “Why?”

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” she winks as she steps away.

Hooked, he follows her out of the stables. It is still early in the morning and the sun has barely risen, but there is already a silhouette on the horizon, a thin shadow riding a horse. From where he stands, Thomas can barely make out the details of it, but he spots dark long hair floating in the wind, and skin so pale it reflects the sun, like the surface of a peaceful lake.

“Pretty, isn’t she?” Brenda scowls.

“I guess?” he replies, relatively unimpressed. “Who is she?”

“Lady Teresa Agnes,” Brenda announces in a fake pompous manner. “New money. Her father runs businesses in New York.”

“I see.”

 “And also, Sir Newton’s future wife.”

…Wait, what?

“They’re engaged?” Thomas almost chokes out.

“Unfortunately, yes,” she replies, crossing her arms.

He feels something wicked and unfamiliar twists his insides. “He didn’t tell me he was getting married.”

Brenda doesn’t seem surprised. “Maybe he believes that, if he doesn’t say it out loud, it will stop their union from happening.”

“He doesn’t want to get married,” Thomas thinks out loud, putting the pieces together.

“And neither does she. Marriages are nothing but business deals anyway. Of course they enjoy each other’s company, but you can hardly say they’re marrying out of love. It is entirely his father’s choice, and if you ask me, he is only doing it to stop rumours from spreading.”

Part of him wants to ask what rumours she is talking about, but he is afraid he has already worked it out. It is a simple equation, and Thomas has always been good at maths. Take a scandal big enough to make you flee the country, add a rushed marriage, multiply it all by the longing stares Newt gave him last night – it doesn’t take a genius to work it all out.

“And you,” Thomas asks, trying to distract himself from his own conclusions. “How do you feel about her?”

Something shifts on Brenda’s pretend emotionless face. “It doesn’t matter how I feel about her.”

“It does, if she becomes the new lady of the land,” he insists, but the death glare she addresses him makes him wish he hadn’t.

“It doesn’t, Thomas.”

He almost wants to apologise for pushing it, but something tells him it would only make matters worse, so he lets the dust settle. They stand side by side in the December cold, and he finds it easy to exist by Brenda’s side. She reminds him of his younger self somehow, hiding his insecurities behind an artificial confidence, sugarcoating it all with some cunning humour. He can’t even imagine what it is like to be a woman like her in an era he knows the Victorian age to be.

“Sir Newton is a good man, you know?” she suddenly speaks out, eyes never leaving Teresa.  “He was the one to talk his father into letting me run the stables for them, when no other family was willing to give a woman horsekeeper a chance. There is something about him that is…different. We understand each other.”

“Because there is something different about you as well?”

He was ready to face her anger, expected her to tell him to get lost, but instead, a discreet, bittersweet smile appears at the corner of her lips, quick as a shooting star and gone just as fast. They are two fleeting objects, floating aimlessly in the universe, meeting unexpectedly in outer space, finding out that, despite coming from different galaxies, they are much alike. Brenda has just realised that.

“You ask a lot of questions, Thomas,” she warns him. “And I think you already know the answers to most of them.”

“Why are you telling me all this?”

She grins and does a terrible job at hiding it. “I don’t know, Thomas. Why did you come to talk to me?”

“Why did you answer my questions?” he grins right back, shamelessly, She observes him for a while, long enough for the wind to change its course.

“There is something about you, it sets you apart from others,” she finally answers, and the sun peeks out from behind the cloud for the first time that morning. “Is everyone like you where you come from?”

“My mama always says I am special,” he replies childishly, and that earns him a laugh. He has finally broken the shell she is hiding in, and only realises she is about to make him pay for it when she shoves him full force into a muck heap, and he lands butt first into piles of horse excrement. 

“Bless her soul. It cannot be easy to have a dingus for son!”

A few horses jump and neigh at how loud Thomas’s laughter is, and in the distance, he can even see that Teresa’s horse has stopped trotting, and she is looking at the pair, confusion written all over her face. He grabs a handful of dung and throws it in Brenda’s direction. It explodes all over her chest, ruining her cream-coloured shirt, and she shrieks at the impact.

“What is happening here?”

From where Thomas is lying in the dirt, Newt’s face appears high in the sky as he approaches. It is where it should be, he thinks. The sky is where stars belong. He rises slowly from his awkward position and is baffled to notice that, even though he is covered in horse shit, Newt somehow still looks at him with an immeasurable tenderness. His smile is a bit cheeky, yes – he is not immune to the comedy of the situation – but he cannot hide the way his breath is cut short by the single sight of Thomas, like a child witnessing a meteor shower for the first time.

Something in Brenda’s wistful expression makes him wonder if he looks at Newt with that same beatitude, and judging by the way his soul and heart grow quiet and calm as soon as their eyes meet, maybe, just maybe, he does.

Newt doesn’t notice right away the small ball of dirt in Thomas’s hand, but when he does, his crooked grin vanishes.

“Thomas, no,” he warns. But he has forgotten that Thomas has already seen that specific look in his eyes, the one that begs him to act, to brighten up his life in the most unexpected of ways, to spark things up in his dull existence.

Devilishly, Thomas waits for his hand to be inches away from Newt’s cheek to splash it all on the side of his face, and the look of outrage on the boy’s face is utterly priceless.

“Oh, it’s on!” the young lord shouts before shoving his impromptu guest right back into the mud.

The news of Thomas’s arrival spreads in the estate like wildfire. “Sir Edison will be expected for dinner tonight. Father will be there,” Lizzy tells them when she stops by the stables to talk to Brenda, so when the evening comes, Newt decides to give him a proper makeover, something more than welcome considering he is covered in manure.

He ends up in one of Newt’s linen shirts – so much for mocking them – and laughs a little when Newt adds a bowtie to his collar. He has never worn such proper clothes, never had the right occasion, and everytime he reminds himself that it is Newt’s clothes that he is wearing, shivers run down his spine all the way to his fingertips. He buttons up the shirt, thinking of nothing but Newt’s delicate fingers following the same pattern.

“How do I look?” he asks once the final touch – a small carnation as buttonhole – is added to the outfit.

“Tommy, you look…”

The words never come out. Maybe they never existed at all, and even if they did, Newt has never needed them before. Only when looking at constellations up above has he seen something as breathtaking as the boy before him, and he has never needed to put those emotions into words, for no one ever cared to listen before. The only one who would sit down to hear him gush about the stars has only been in his life for one day, and regardless, Thomas has already figured out that Newt has grown much more interested in the constellation of moles he wears on his cheeks, little dots aching to be linked together by butterfly kisses.

“Tommy?” he chuckles. “That’s new.”

A thin blush erupts on Newt’s cheeks, and Thomas has just the time to catch a glimpse of it before Newt looks down. “Excuse me, I did not mean any disrespect by it.”

“Don’t be sorry, Newtie,” he teases, and magically, Newt’s lopsided smile pops back. “It’s cute.”

“Don’t you dare,” he nearly threatens.

“Oh, so you have the right to call me Tommy but I don’t get to give you a nickname?”

“Grandmother calls me Newtie,” the blond strikes back. “And I would rather not think of her when you are around.”

“Should I find something else then? Something more…personal?” Thomas suggests. He takes a step forward, willingly becoming Newt’s satellite. There are worse things in the world than to orbit around a beautiful boy.

“I would like to see you try.” The look Newt gives him can’t be misunderstood. He wants this just as much as Thomas, if not more. There are years of longing, of wishing, of desperate hoping written between the lines of his carefully-chosen words.

“I’m sure I’ll find something you like, eventually.”

He whispers it, for the whole world goes quiet as their hands meet. It could almost seem accidental, fingers unexpectedly bumping together, if only they didn’t instinctively intertwine.

“Those are pretty,” he murmurs, not knowing a simple hand could be so graceful. He runs his thumb along Newt’s numerous rings. He must have stolen them from Saturn, judging by how they’re shimmering.

“Do you want one?”

Without waiting for an answer, he takes off one of the rings – a thin silver band in appearance, but a discreet layer of moonstone shines through it – and slips it on Thomas’s finger. He picks the right ring finger; bold but not presumptuous, loving but not quite yet in love.

Their fingers dance a slow waltz, between delicate brushes and idolatrous touches. They get to know each other through touch, and Thomas is amazed by how easier it is to communicate what he feels with the simple stroke of a thumb. He finds words have long become obsolete, for Newt’s hand turns out to be a better window to his heart than his mouth ever was. His fingers write little messages in his palms, a couple strokes that mean thank you for changing my life and do you only know how enchanted I am to have met you. They make their way to Thomas’s heart in goosebumps and shivers.

Thomas doesn’t notice right away how their bodies gravitate toward each other, how, like magnets, they inexorably grow closer; not until the tip of a nose brushes his own, and he can’t help a gasp from escaping his lips and landing on Newt’s. He didn’t expect it all to happen so fast, didn’t think Newt would be that forward, but only the ghost of what-ifs stands between them now. Just a tilt of the head would be enough to—

Knock knock!

“Sir Newton?” a warm voice calls.

From up close, Thomas witnesses the way Newt frowns and bites his lip in bittersweet frustration. He doesn’t shy away though, doesn’t jump out of their embrace, though the young maid could easily open the door and catch them red-handed.

“Yes, Harriet?” he simply calls back, so close that Thomas feels his breath on the corner of his lips.

“Dinner is served, Sir,” the maid replies behind the closed door.

“Thank you, Hari,” he replies, still floating in Thomas’s atmosphere.

“Should I warn Sir Edison?”

This time, when Newt bites his lips, they break free in a crooked, amused smile.“That…won’t be necessary. You may leave.”

Once the echo of Harriet’s steps has dwindled, Newt finally opens his eyes, only to find Thomas already watching him, the same bittersweet smile of what could have been, spread on his lips.

Though their faces are pulled apart by poor circumstances, their hands don’t part, and Newt’s clever fingers lead him downstairs, ghost of each other still vibrant on their tongues. Thomas sits down at the dinner table with the foolish hope that, eventually, the planets and the fates and all the stars might align, and the labyrinth keeping him and Newt apart might turn into a straight path.

“So where do you come from, Sir Edison?”

It is the first question that Newt’s father asks him, over half an hour after dinner has begun. For a moment, Thomas almost thought the old man didn’t notice his presence, but now all eyes are drawn to him, and the clutter of cutlery has stopped, holding on for an answer to finally put an end to the eccentric theories that have been flying around. He has overheard in corridors domestics gossiping about his whereabouts, drawing conclusions to the fact that they only now were charged to prepare his apartments, guessing where he must have spent the previous night. “Sir Newton should be more careful,” a whisper said by the restrooms earlier in the evening, “after what happened in London,” and he doesn’t want to cause any trouble, not to Newt or to his reputation.

“A faraway land,” he replies in an attempt to stay as evasive as possible. “You’ve probably never heard of it.”

“Please, entertain me, boy,” he defies him. “I have travelled the globe, as I am sure my son has informed you. I have named mountains in Africa after me, and mapped out parts of the Amazonian forest. I don’t imagine you could possibly come from a place I have not heard of before.”

He knows he should have prepared for that question, but until now, he simply hoped he would find a solution on the spot. So much for being a science-defying genius. But the man’s eyes seem to bore into his skull, waiting for an answer that would satisfy his curiosity, and all that Thomas manages to provide is the first place that comes to his mind.

“I’m from…Pluto.”

Across the table, Newt chokes on his glass of wine, snorts hard enough to spill some of it on the tablecloth. Red plashes all over his cheeks and on the table, burgundy all over his shirt and dripping on the floor..

“Newton!” his father scowls. “You could behave for once!”

“My apologies, father,” he answers in-between puffs of laughter.

And though he is speaking to his dad, Newt doesn’t take his eyes off of Thomas, tries to send wordless messages through them – something along the lines of what the hell?? if Thomas understands right.

“Pluto? Now indeed, that is a name I have never heard before…,” the old man agrees, oblivious to the farce happening unbeknownst to him.

Thomas clears his throat. “It is…uhm…very cold there. We don’t get much sun.”

And he watches, amused, as Newt desperately tries to keep himself from bursting into laughter again, cheeks scarlett from holding a chuckle captive. Elizabeth seems to have realised as well that something is flying over everybody else’s heads, her eyes wittily navigating between the two of them with a discreet smile.

“Ah, a shame,” the old man replies, shutting down the secretive laughs.

“Truly,” Thomas agrees, perfecky playing the part. “That is precisely why I am delighted that Newton so kindly invited me to help him in his research. The weather here makes it considerably easier to watch astronomical phenomena.”

“I thought he was the only crazy man who wasted his time studying the stars.”

As soon as the words are out, the joyful wrinkles at the corners of Newt’s eyes vanish, sprinkles of glee instantly washed away by the wrong remark.

“Father…” Lizzy tries to intervene, but her attempts are fruitless.

“Do you know what grotesque idea he entertained me with a few days ago?” the man insists, visibly unmoved by the way his own son shrinks on himself and nervously digs his fingers in the mahogany table. “He thinks that, someday, men will walk on the Moon! Perfectly ridiculous, isn’t it?”

Thomas doesn’t find in himself the strength to answer, to keep playing that game. It seems his wits abandoned him when he saw the peculiar mix of hurt and lassitude in Newt’s eyes, the one that tells him it isn’t the first time that that young, beautiful mind is being diminished to a lunatic. Somewhere within Thomas, something breaks, when he realises that somewhere, something within Newt was broken beyond repair, and his whole body aches with the urge to hold him close, to shield him from the outside world and create their own cosmos, where there would be nothing but them and that unexplainable bond they share. Would Newt want that too?

He hopes so.

God, he hopes so.

Dinner is cut short when Elizabeth claims to feel nauseous because of the baby, and Harriet tells Thomas that a room has been prepared for him.

“Sir Newton informed me that he would show you the way to your room,” she says. “I would recommend moving your belongings there, even if you do not intend to occupy the bed.”

He wants to ask what she means by it, but she is gone before he gets the chance, making a beeline up the stairs where Lizzy’s room is, and Thomas starts to wonder if there is more to the young maid than he originally thought.

“So, Pluto?” Newt asks cheekily once they are alone again, walking down the halls of the mansion. The stain on his white shirt has grown maroon, all over his chest like blood from a stab wound. Thomas did aim for the heart, after all.

“I panicked, okay?” he shrugs with a stupid grin on his face.

“It is becoming a pattern,” Newt cleverly points out. “Maybe I ought to fetch a doctor for you?”

He snorts. “Well, travel one hundred and thirty years to the past, you’ll see how hard it is.”

Newt’s immediate reaction is to roll his eyes. “Why would I want to travel back in time? As if 1890 was not dreadful enough…”

They stop by an old wooden door that Newt opens with a small key before offering it to Thomas. He lets his fingers linger longer than necessary in the now-familiar palm, as if to memorise it perfectly, at least for the night, until they meet again.

“Here,” he says softly. “If you need anything, ring the bell and Harriet will come.” And with a tender voice, he whispers as he steps back and walks away, “Good night, Thomas.”

He knows he is supposed to get in, make himself at home in that room where no piles of overread books and no messily-doodled planets await him, that it would be wiser not too create more disturbance than he already has, for the maelstrom he is causing is bound to come back around to bite him, but he has been told more than once that he can never leave well enough alone, and today is no exception.

“July 20th 1969,” he says out loud, and Newt freezes, turns back to look at him quizzically.

“Excuse me?”

“July, the twentieth, 1969,” he repeats, and Newt’s confused face doesn’t fade away, so he drops the bomb, and waits for the impact. “The day we walked on the Moon.”

It is like watching a flower bloom, witnessing the way realisation dawns on Newt, how his eyes turns into flying saucers, wide and flickering; how his breath is taken away by just a few words, those he has always needed to hear, those who tell him he has been right all along, against all odds, to dream big; and Thomas finds he could spend a lifetime looking at him in that state of stupefaction. But he knows that fleeting moment is temporary; that, eventually, the paths of their lives will split only to never cross again. He cannot afford to let him get too attached, or he might just never recover.

“It will be a Sunday,” he specifies as he steps in his room.

The door is just about to close behind him when he hears it again. It is only the second time, but he finds he could get addicted to it, the vulnerability of that tone, the one that is reserved to those five letters only, the desperation in Newt’s voice that tells him he is already his, entirely.

“Tommy?”

It makes him both incredibly strong and immeasurably weak, that shiver that runs down his whole body whenever Newt says his name, and wants to hear it over and over again, squeezed between breathless moans, whispered repeatedly in his ear until it loses all meaning. What if it is already too late for precautions? Shouldn’t he be allowed to be happy, then, even if it means he will never experience the same joy ever again?

“Yeah?” he pokes his head out of the room, and a single thing is awaiting him.

Newt’s hand.

It’s a simple offer, yet it takes him by surprise. He is unsure of what it entails, but he doesn’t hesitate a second. He offers his hand right back. For the second evening in a row, Newt walks him to his room. They climb the stairs in hushed giggles and infatuated stares, stumble into a room that now feels like home to Thomas, but not nearly as much as Newt does.

“Could you…make your telephone play some music again?” Newt requests once they are both wrapped in his sheets, inches closer than they were last night.

Quite surprisingly, his phone hasn’t run out of battery yet, so he hands out an earbud to Newt and keeps one for himself, picks a song about space, or maybe a few, and they fall asleep under Venus’s bright light. Thomas feels a bit safer knowing she’s watching over them, and maybe it is her doing if, later that night, he feels hesitant fingers caressing his cheek, right under his closed eyes.

Don’t get him wrong, Thomas never meant to spy. He was the first one surprised to be woken up by featherlight strokes all over his face and throat. You shouldn’t blame him for wanting to make it last as long as possible. So he keeps quiet as an adventurous hand explores his face, as fingers climb the hill of his nose and get lost in the canyon of his slightly-parted lips. It kills him, not to kiss welcome those unexpected pilgrims, but he wouldn’t want to scare them away. So he lets them continue their path down the cliff of his jawline. It is being worshipped in the most secretive of ways, admired in the most adoring of manners. He falls back to sleep with the conviction that he was right all along. The butterflies of chaos theory are right there within them, flapping their wings in both their stomachs.

An entire week flies by, a week of desperate attempts to make his time machine work again. A week of sharing earphones and holding hands under bedsheets – because somehow, Newt always finds an excuse to drag Thomas back to his room at night, whether it be would you fancy coming upstairs to watch Saturn? The sky is so clear tonight or could we listen to that song from yesterday again?, and it’s not really like Thomas tries to prevent it either. He doesn’t recall when they started holding hands, when sleeping became synonymous with holding Newt’s frame. He was feeling brave that night, the first time he wrapped his arms around Newt’s silhouette. The boy had shifted in his sleep and turned his back to him, and his soul ached with the knowledge that Newt was so close yet so out of reach. Unbeknownst to his mind, his hands solved the problem by themselves, carefully circling Newt’s waist before going up to land on his chest. His nose easily found a home in the crook of Newt’s neck, somewhere between two strands of angelic hair, and he breathed in the familiar scent of midnight rain and bashful smiles, of late-night conversations and sweet lazy mornings.

He had thought that simple moment of quiet happiness would forever remain his secret, a slow parenthese of serenity in the chaos of his life, a secret that he would be the one keeping from the universe this time around; until he felt cold fingers sliding between his own, timidly, tentatively, then growing bolder with each second as they realised they didn’t face any rejection. Thomas has long lost count of the number of times Newt’s fingers have stroked his skin – at every opportunity he gets, it seems – but each time feels like the first, electricity sparking up down to his bones. He squeezed them, and they squeezed back, a silent sign of affection, an unmistakable proof of desire, of devotion – and Thomas figured Newt probably felt against his shoulder the way the corners of his mouth twitched up. Newt was always fearless at night. Perhaps he got his courage from the stars, learned from them how to shine. Thomas made a mental note to thank them as he fell asleep, Newt’s heart beating against his.

The rest of his week – the time he didn’t spend in Newt’s arms or on his DeLorean – consisted of solving the mysteries of other people in the house, all the while trying to keep himself from being discovered. He had long given up on finding out the identity of the baby’s father, for Lizzy seemed to be a mastermind, not dropping a single clue in her wake; but he was quick to realise that Sonya’s lookalike wasn’t as innocent and she appeared to be. He didn’t know quite yet what it was about her, but he had figured out that Harriet had to be in the loop, for more than once he had stumbled upon her while sneaking back to his room after a night spent sharing Newt’s dreams, stumbled upon her shadow exiting Lizzy’s bedroom. But a hushed agreement seemed to establish itself between them, and they only shared awkward yet understanding smiles before pretending to have never crossed paths.

There was Brenda, too, and the curious hatred she carried for the young Teresa, the elephant in the room whose existence Newt was yet to reveal to Thomas. He forgot from time to time that the boy he held at night was promised to another, that he wasn’t the only one orbiting around the sun. But the presence of the woman was always felt, from fresh prints in the morning snow to telegrams at the dinner table. She and Thomas may have never talked, but her piercing blue eyes had landed on him multiple times since he arrived, and her expression remained indecipherable every time, daring him to talk to her but freezing him in place at the same time.

There was probably an easy answer to all of this, something so obvious that Thomas failed to consider it, but he stubbornly wanted to find it out. It was against his nature to refuse a challenge; after all, what kind of scientist would that make him? Yet he had the unfunny feeling that his time was running out, that the longer he bent the rules of the universe, the harder they were going to break. He simply hoped that when it did, it wouldn’t set both of his worlds aflame.

Thomas never really wondered what exact date in the past he landed on, stupidly enough. He was probably too busy trying to get back to his era, or too caught up in the contemplation of Newt’s world, that he forgot one of the most important elements of his trip through time. It is only when he spots the large Christmas tree in the middle of the ballroom that he realises he should have asked the question.

“Tonight is Christmas Eve,” Harriet supplies when he finally does. “Sir Newton is hosting a reception. The yule ball is a long-standing tradition in the family. Surely he must have informed you.”

He hasn’t. Of course he hasn’t, because Thomas left their bed this morning before the sun rose, disrupting the precarious balance of the planets and the stars. They glowered at him from across the glass ceiling of Newt’s observatory, scolding him for leaving the other boy alone. He hadn’t meant to, but he couldn’t help the guilt that built in his stomach when he lied by Newt’s side, idly dreaming of a future they’d never have, while his friends were probably worried sick waiting for him to come back. Tearing himself away from Newt’s peaceful arms had been torture, the worst kind, and it got harder every time, so much that Thomas feared he would one day not find the strength to.

There is frost outside, covering the mansion with a thin veil of ice, the kind of coldness Thomas was born too late to experience. Small cracks resonate under his – Newt’s – shoes, and he wraps himself tightly in his – again, Newt’s – winter coat. He could stay here for evermore, to watch that scenery quietly evolve, to watch the passage of time until it all melts away, but his future is awaiting him at the other end of the estate, a shining car bound to transport his body back to the future, while part of his soul inevitably remains trapped in the snowfall.

He is just about to enter the stables when he hears the familiar roaring sound of a car motor, something so distinctively out of place in that Victorian setting that he thinks his brain is making it up, but he still rushes to the wooden building to make sure, only to find the DeLorean running, headlights on and exhaust pipe steaming; and Teresa, standing before the open bonnet, eyes wide and panicked.

“What did you do?” he shouts, somewhere between fear and excitement, as he runs to meet her.

“I…I don’t–” she babbles, confused, as Thomas rummages through the pipes and spare parts to see what has changed, what was the one thing he forgot to consider to make the car work again. “I’m sorry. I saw you and Newt working on that automobile and I got curious. I wanted…I wanted to take a look, that’s it. And now it’s making that loud noise. I think I might have broken something–”

“Teresa, you’re a genius,” he cuts in, exhilarated. “The starter…Of course the problem was the starter.”

The weight of the world seems to be lifted off her shoulders. “So, I didn’t break it?”

It is only when he looks up from the machinery that he realises this is his first proper interaction with Teresa, the first time he sees her from up close, the first time he hears her talk, and he is struck by how nice she seems to be. Like with Brenda, he has the strange sensation of already knowing her, like a long-lost childhood friend. He thought her to be cold and heartless, probably from the poor picture Brenda likes to depict, but her candid smile instantly breaks the ice her intimidating eyes try to create.

“If anything, you just pioneered science,” he answers, causing her smile to widen.

“I…Father always says science is for boys,” she says in a hushed voice as she toys with a cable. “He abhors my interest in scientific matters.”

“Then he is an idiot,” Thomas assures her with a friendly hand on her shoulder. “You have no idea how important women are going to be for science.”

She puffs. “You say that like you’ve been to the future and saw it from your own eyes.”

“Oh, if only you knew,” he jokes, but the young lady seems to remain unconvinced. It is a curse, he thinks sometimes, to have that much information about the future but to not be allowed to share it. Corrupting Newt with all that forbidden knowledge was already a line he crossed too easily; he cannot let himself do it again. Who knows how much it could disrupt the universe?

But judging by the sudden rebirth of his time machine, it won’t be a problem for long anymore.

“I need to tell Newt,” he mutters. He and Teresa share a polite nod before he runs back to the house, and as he sprints across the garden, he realises how happy he is to have met her, in the end. At least, he won’t be leaving Newt in bad hands.

“I have some good news,” he almost shouts as he barges into the bedroom.

“Do tell,” Newt smiles at him, still under the covers. Thomas tries not think too much about his unruly bed hair, about the way it curls slightly against the pillow on which his own head was lying mere minutes ago, tries not to stare to long at the little freckles on his shoulder, and all the porcelain skin his undershirt uncovers. He might stammer on his next words if he starts to wonder how much more Newt would glow in the morning sun with a couple hickeys on his collarbone.

“It’s working!” he miraculously announces without a stutter.

“...I am not sure I quite understand,” Newt replies, comically tilting his head to the side.

“The time machine,” he then explains, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It’s working again. I’m finally gonna be able to go back home.”

It is ever so subtle, the way Newt’ smile gradually vanishes, leaving him with a distraught expression he completely fails to hide.

“So you’re leaving? Now?” he asks, his gaze suddenly more interested in his bed sheets than in Thomas.

“Well, yeah,” he says quietly. He was so elated by the news to finally have a viable way back home that he forgot all that it entailed; and first on the list was saying goodbye. He knew that doing so would sadden him, but he had failed to realise how completely wrecked Newt would be once left behind. “Newt, you always knew I wasn’t going to stay–”

“Yes, of course,” he huffs with the shadow of a smile. “Of course I knew that. I’m happy for you.”

The frost invites itself in the room, freezes everything in its wake, the space between Thomas and Newt being its first victim. How could Thomas’s joy turn so quickly into that bitter feeling? He has the sudden sensation that everything in the world is wrong, that after a week of respite, the gods have finally decided to make him pay him for his hubris, and with the worst of punishments – to be the cause of Newt’s heartbreak.

“Newt, please, don’t be upset,” he says, biting his lips in regret. It is his fault after all, he has let it go too far; was well aware of how much it would hurt, yet ignored the warning signs. He cringes almost, thinking about all the sorrow he could have prevented.

“I’m not upset.” 

Newt couldn’t be less convincing if he tried. Maybe he thinks Thomas can’t spot the tears that bead in his eyes. He’d wiped them off, if he were sure Newt wouldn’t push his hand away.

“If there is anything I can do to make it better, tell me,” he pleads as a last resort.

“Stay,” is Newt’s ineluctable answer. “Just for the night. For the ball–”

“There’s a party?” he innocently asks.

That works, a little. At least it makes Newt chuckle. “Do not play dumb. I know that Harriet told you about it.”

“Or maybe she told the real Thomas Edison, you never know.” Another chuckle. The sun seems to shine through again. Bitter turns to bittersweet; it’s better than nothing.

“Please?” Newt insists like a little child. “Just for the time to say goodbye. Your time machine will still be here when the night comes.”

It is a truth that escaped Thomas’s grasp until now, the fact that he is the one putting that pressure on himself to get back to 2022 as fast as possible. He has already been gone for ten days now, what difference does one evening make?

“Alright,” he finally capitulates. “I’ll stay.”

He thinks he has figured it out.

In hindsight, it should have been obvious. He has read enough novels, seen enough movies to know how this thing works. It is a pretty common trope – the two enemies who were actually in love all along; so common he didn’t even think it was an option; but now that he rationalises it, it’s nothing short of a grand love story for the ages. He doesn’t know what gives him the last little nudge to come to that conclusion, but once he has made sense of things, he can’t unsee it, nor can leave it be. If one good thing can come out of this time-travelling fiasco, he is going to make sure it does happen.

“So, you’re in love with Teresa,” he says plainly as he re-enters the stables.

“Pardon me?” Brenda chokes out, dropping a riding hat to the ground.

“Aren’t you?” He cocks an eyebrow and steps closer, makes sure Teresa isn’t anywhere near before he resumes. “That’s why you don’t want her and Newt to marry. Not because he would be unhappy, but because you would be.”

“Be careful what you are insinuating, Thomas,” she warns him, and if looks could kill, she would have already murdered him twenty times.

“There is something different about you, you said so yourself,” he reminds her, and watches as she breathes in deeply, obviously mad at her past self for letting that slip out. “Well, there is something different about me too.”

“I figured,” she rolls her eyes and sits on a small wooden bench. He immediately sits by her side. “It isn’t a secret to anyone that you spend every night in Newt’s bed, no matter how smooth you two think you are.”

He feels blood rushing to his cheeks, and Brenda laughs when she sees how flustered he is. It is true that they were not the most discreet, but still, it’s not like anything has virtually happened between them.

“Then I guess you know you can trust me,” he concludes.

“I guess I can.”

A horse neighs in the distance, the one that Teresa rides. They both watch as the young woman gets down to softly pet its nose, and playfully kisses its cheek, until a happier neigh echoes.

“She sure seems to spend a lot of time riding that horse,” Thomas points out.

“She likes animals,” Brenda agrees.

“Or she likes the one keeping them.”

“Thomas, don’t start,” she gives him another death stare.

He remains unfazed. “You should ask her to dance tonight.”

“Have you lost your mind?” she almost screams out. “In case you had not noticed, Thomas, I am a woman. And I don’t know how things are in that Pluto of yours, but here, women don’t ask other women to dance.”

“Don’t you want to, though?”

“Of course I want to, what do you think?” she sighs. “I mean, have you seen her?”

He has, and he gets it. Maybe if a certain wistful boy with a telescope didn’t exist, he would have fallen for Teresa too. He would have told her more about cars and about the women who changed the face of the Earth. But he met Newt, and fell in love with the stars.

“I even dream about it sometimes,” Brenda confesses, lost in her thoughts. “I put on a suit and hide my hair, I pretend to be some Lord from this or that place, and I ask her if she fancies a dance.”

“And?”

“She always says yes,” the corners of her mouth twitch up. “We spend the whole night together until the orchestra grows tired, then she sneaks me into her apartments and tells me to take off her dress. I kiss her shoulder and her spine as I undo the corset. She turns around and undoes my shirt. That’s when she realises I was a woman all along.”

“What happens next?”

“I don’t know,” she lets a bitter chuckle out. “I always wake up at that moment.”

A tiny chuckle escapes Thomas’s lips. He has fallen enough times for straight men to know how that feels. The fear of rejection, or even worse, of a look of disgust. It has happened to him over and over, so he can’t really blame her, but it feels unfair that she doesn’t even get a chance to try; a chance to hope.

The planets didn’t align for nothing, he thinks. There must be a reason he was sent here, a reason he felt an immediate connection with Brenda. It cannot just be a happenstance.

“Come with me,” he tells her and heads back to the house.

He doesn’t expect her to follow, not without a little push at least, but she does. She follows him without asking any question, until they reach his apartments. Nothing here belongs to him – the sheets on the bed are new (and untouched) and the clothes in the wardrobe are Newt’s – but now he decides it is Brenda’s.

He fetches a pair of trousers and a shirt, a pair of fancy shoes and a tie – all under Brenda’s inquiring eyes.

“What are you doing?” she finally asks when he grabs a pair of scissors from the bathroom cabinet.

“I’m finding out what happens after the dream ends.”

The hardest part is convincing Brenda to let him cut her hair, but once it is done, she squeals with excitement, running her hand on her scalp. It may just be the first step to a longer journey for her, Thomas senses. She picks a secret identity as well, a new name for herself, and Thomas teaches her how to knot a tie, though he still struggles himself.

By the time they are done, candles have been lit up and appetisers have been served. They step into the ballroom and spot the same pair at the same time; Newt and Teresa, slow-dancing in the crowd. You could almost be fooled, watching them together. They share smiles like a proper couple, exchange a few words here and there; laugh, even, when they sway a bit too close to the orchestra and almost get stabbed by an imprudent violin bow; and it’s all so genuine. The grin on Newt’s face is not the same as the one he wears when he is with Thomas; it resembles more the one caused by Lizzy. In any case, he seems to be happy.

“People find friends in the strangest of circumstances,” Brenda comments, much to Thomas’s amusement. If only she knew how right she is. He didn’t expect to get attached to someone, let alone a whole group of people.

“How are you feeling? Brave enough to ask her?” he asks in return.

She scoffs as an answer, “Maybe after a few flutes of champagne.”

“Take your time,” he gives her an encouraging smile, hoping it will be enough, before he himself gets swallowed by the crowd.

He makes his way to Newt the best he can, only to see a petite silhouette almost crashing into the boy in question.

“Newt! You promised me a dance, did you forget?” the young Elizabeth nearly yells.

“How could I?” he chuckles. “You are too annoying to let me forget a promise.”

The twins drift away as the music starts again, leaving Thomas and Teresa by themselves. They stare at each other as a tangible awkwardness settles, and he senses her trying to find a good reason to politely walk away, but he has a mission to fulfil.

“I wanted to dance with you, if that’s okay?” he declares. “To thank you for helping me with my car.”

“You talk in such a peculiar manner, Sir Edison,” she stresses, proving that she is not fooled by his pretend identity.

“Is that a yes?”

She holds out her hand. “A lady never refuses a dance.”

“Where I come from, they can,” he argues as their bodies settle in a proper frame. “I wouldn’t want to force you.”

“You are not forcing me,” she assures him. He tries the best he can to pretend he knows ballroom dancing. If he steps a couple times on Teresa’s feet, she doesn’t say a thing.

“I understand you are leaving us soon,” she says once they’ve grown into a rhythm. “It’s a shame.”

“Did Newt tell you?”

“There was no need. His sadness spoke for itself.”

He isn’t sure what to say to that. “I’m sure he will get over it fast, with a bride like you.”

It makes her giggle a little. “I think we both know that won’t be enough.”

“And you are okay with that?”

She shrugs. “He is a good man, a friend. I will be lucky to have him by my side for the rest of my days.”

“Wouldn’t you be happier marrying a man you love, and who can love you back? Actual love, not just friendship?”

A sad grin grows on her lips. “I think you’ll find such a thing is not possible, Thomas.”

Is it possible, he wonders, that the universe was kind enough to make such a thing happen? To align the stars one by one, cleverly, and put Newt, Brenda and Teresa on the same path, three kindred souls, so they would find comfort within each other?   

“This marriage is a good compromise,” she maintains. “The best solution for the both of us. And it is not like there is much of an alternative.”

“What if there is?”

As if on queue, the music stops, and while the musicians prepare their new chords, Thomas walks Teresa to the other end of the room, where her destiny awaits her.

“Teresa, please allow me to introduce you to George, a good friend of mine from Pluto.”

Thomas has to admit, Brenda makes for a rather handsome lord, with her natural cunning smile and charming manners. He’d probably succumb to her charm as well after a glass or two of champagne and a well-executed dance; but the question remains, would Teresa?

“Would you do me the honour to dance with me, Lady Teresa?”

Brenda bends her head slightly as she asks, so she doesn’t see the astonishment in Teresa’s eyes, the way her jaw drops and she sends a panicked glance to Thomas. Silence stretches for endless seconds as the girl tries to make sense of this impossible situation, and Thomas prays he wasn’t in the wrong thinking Teresa might feel the same way.

He has almost lost all hope when Teresa dauntlessly lifts up Brenda’s chin with her right hand.

“It would be my pleasure, Sir George,” she accepts, and she is the one to grab Brenda’s hand, to lead her to the dancing floor, and to throw her arms around the other girl’s neck when the music picks up.

Thomas is pretty sure Brenda mouths him a thank you, so he answers with a little wave, but she is already too engrossed by Teresa’s presence to notice.

Maybe it’s what he gets for playing Emma Woodhouse all day, but he can’t help but feel a twinge of jealousy when he watches the two girls swaying along to the music. So he scans the crowd for a tuft of blond hair, in the hope of testing his luck as well. When he finds who he has been looking for, he dives back into the sea of bodies, grabs a hand that instinctively clutches his, and drags the object of his desire all the way to the main staircase.

“Tommy, what–”

“Come with me.”

They reach the observatory in a matter of seconds, and Thomas pulls his phone out of his pocket. It has only 2% of battery left; but it is more than enough for what he needs. He picks a slow song, something you can fall in love to, and turns the volume up.

“Will you dance with me?” he asks Newt as he throws his phone on the bed.

“I beg your pardon?” the young lord stutters, jaw dropping to the floor.

“Will you, Sir Newton, dance with me?” he repeats.

Newt is staring at him like he has just lost his mind, like he has done so many times in the past days. It has worked pretty well so far, each moment of bewilderment followed by a smile.

“I can’t,” Newt mechanically replies.

“Why not? There’s nobody here but us.”

“But–”

“Isn’t that why you asked me to stay for the night?” Thomas pushes, taking Newt’s hand in his. “So we could dance together.”

He doesn’t need a confirmation to know that he is right. It is obvious in the way Newt’s body leans in while his mind resists.

“Please, Newt,” he whispers. “Stop being afraid of the things you want,”

It must have worked somehow, because the next thing he knows, Newt brings a hand to Thomas’s shoulder, takes the step that separate him from Thomas’s heart, and chuckles a little when they start to waltz.

As they dance together, two codependent stars relying on one another, he recalls the moment they met. He thinks about the lonely boy watching the sky through his telescope, until the crash of a car interrupted his moony thoughts, who was ready to shoot him at the first encounter, though he had probably never held a weapon before. What a crappy survival instinct he has, falling for a boy ready to take him down with a shotgun. But so much has changed since, and the best part is, he is okay with it. He is okay with leaving his heart behind if it means Newt can keep it forever. He will just borrow Newt’s in exchange, until they meet again, in a place even the stars don’t know about.

When the music dies out, it does so without a warning. Both boys stop in their tracks, foreheads glued together and the tips of their noses playing tag. Newt has closed his eyes a while ago, lulled by Thomas’s sweet caresses. If only he opened them now, he would see the way Thomas is looking at him, like he is made of moonstone, made to be venerated, carved in the purest of marble and painted with the brightest of colours.

His hand wanders on Newt’s shoulder, and when it encounters one of his suspenders, he slowly nudges it off his shoulder, and feels Newt shudder under his touch, his breath hitching noticibly when Thomas gets closer, when his lips tickle the skin of his neck. It is only when Thomas dares to lay a kiss on that soft patch of skin that things unexpectedly go downhill.

“What are you doing?” Newt yelps, jerking back like he has been burned.

Here it is. The crushing realisation that he might have made a mistake. His head starts spinning all of a sudden, all the events playing back in reverse. Was there a hint somewhere in there telling him Newt didn’t feel the same?

“I…I’m…I’m sorry. I thought…I-I thought you…,” he mumbles clumsily as he steps back.

He can hardly remember the last time he cried, but he finds himself having to fight back the tears that come with the realisation that he imagined everything, that none of what he thought to be happening between them was real. The timid glances, the soft strokes of fingers, the nights spent under the same sheets talking about the rings of Saturn.

“Please forgive me” he says at last before rushing to the door, afraid that he might be sick if Newt keeps looking at him like he is a monster.

How could he think for one second that it would work? How could he let himself hope for something so improbable? It’s so typical of him to misread all the signs, he has done it so many times, but he had the silly wish that for once, he would finally be right.

He puts his hand on the handle and is just about to leave for good, forget about this episode of his life and start over with a new dream, but the gods aren’t done toying with him. All it takes is one word, and the universe stops spinning.

“...Tommy…”

It is a whisper, the faint ghost of a simple word, of a name he now cherishes more than his own, that causes the apocalypse. Is it really such a bad thing if things are never the same again, if everything burns to the ground and life gets to start anew, redefine itself with different laws and without predicaments, if the planets start spinning backwards and all that he knew before becomes obsolete?

Would it be that bad?

It is barely a whisper, a desperate plea, carrying an emotion that defies the idea of ever being conceptualised, for he thinks he is the only person to ever have felt what he feels now, hearing that nickname that has given birth to a new side of him he never thought could exist, that has redefined him into a better man than he could ever wish to be, spoken like a prayer to a angel he know he isn’t but that someone else makes him want to be. It is barely a whisper, but it has changed the course of his existence, and he knows that whatever he does now will change the balance of things forever.

So he does something he’s never done before.

He looks back.

Thomas has always wondered what the first astronauts felt when they saw stars from up close, when they looked straight into the sun, and the sun looked back. He thinks he knows now, and nothing could have prepared him for it. The sight of Newt, his cheeks reddened by something other than the wine, his eyes blown wide by a mixture of fear and desire, and there is something in them Thomas has never seen before, a flicker of something he cannot pitpoint, the flicker that – he is sure of it – called his name. Newt’s white shirt is all crinkled and half open, one suspender down and the other begging to be taken off. He is nothing but pale skin waiting to be touched, aching to be mapped out for the first time, and Thomas feels his heart twist when he catches a glimpse at the timid constellation of freckles on his collarbone, made to be claimed by whoever would be bold enough to trace it.

Deep brown eyes looking right into Thomas’s; Newt brings tentative fingers to his own shoulder. He has never been as brave as he is now, pushing the remaining brace off and letting it fall to his knee. It’s an invitation, and who is Thomas to refuse him?

And yet, he lets Newt make every step, set the rhythm and choose the pace. The wooden floor creaks under each step he takes, as he gets closer to Thomas ever so carefully, their eyes never leaving each other. It’s the sweetest kind of torture, those few seconds before two universes collide into each other, before they are forever changed for worse and better. All of it was inevitable, in retrospect. Two lonely bodies, lost in space, struck by epiphany as they met. No wonder they let their respective universes revolve around each other, endlessly spinning together for survival. After all, gravity is merely matter’s response to loneliness.

Thomas isn’t afraid when atoms finally come crashing together, when they explode into a supernova that cannot be controlled. He has long lost track of time, so it is hard to recall which happens first, between Newt’s fingers brushing his face like a shy cosmonaut taking his first steps on a brand new planet, or his own hands, cradling the boy’s frame like he might die if they’re ever apart again. Regardless, here they stand, millimetres from chaos, breathing the same air and thinking the same thoughts; two halves of the same soul finally reunited after being split apart by time and space. Oh, how the gods must have been jealous of their love, he thinks, if they put so much effort into making sure they would never find their way back to each other. But the gods forgot one detail.

Thomas believes in destiny.

“Will you allow me?” he hears being whispered against his lips. It should be a warning sign, the wing of a butterfly reminding him that each of his actions could have dramatic consequences. But in this moment, as foolish as it sounds, he decides he doesn’t care. He would let time and space tumble down, he would put an end to the universe itself, he would annihilate it all; all for one boy, and the promise of a kiss.

“Anything,” he replies, and the rest of the universe collapses when Newt’s lips finally, miraculously, land on his.

Thomas heard once that there are two possible outcomes when two stars collide; either they merge, forever become part of one another, are made indissociable until the end of times, or they explode in a supernova, destroying everything in their wake but themselves; changing the rules of their world in any case. Both of those happen, he thinks, when Newt unashamedly captures his upper-lip, and pours his entire essence into the kiss, years of silent yearning, of slow anguish, aching for something that would never be his. But that was before an asteroid came crashing down, in the shape of a carefree boy ready to flip fate around.

Thomas too can barely believe his luck, as he opens his mouth to let Newt venture further into his soul, offering himself whole. He decides the most beautiful music in the world is the littlest gasps Newt makes in-between kisses, those muffled by his own mouth. They echo within him, waking up something that has been dormant for centuries it seems. He has kissed before, and he has been kissed, but never before have the lips of another felt like oxygen, the hands of another felt like home, the body of another felt like heaven.

He lets himself be clay to the hands that reshape him, to the fingers that stroke his neck and caress his chest. His own get lost somewhere in Newt’s hair, somewhere under his shirt, pull him impossibly closer until the space between them disappears, until every speck of stardust vanishes. There is nothing left in the universe but them. Two lovers, at the centre of everything.

They break apart for only seconds, just enough for Thomas to look into Newt’s eyes, pupils doubled in size, blackholes luring him in to be kept captive until the end of times. He dives into them, headfirst, and stars shine brighter under his closed eyelids than they ever did in the night sky.

In between reckless giggles and amorous moans, kisses that come by the pocketful, he hears that sweet nickname he loves so much, catches it before it has even rolled off Newt’s tongue. It tastes wonderful, something both so new and familiar, like his body is discovering it for the first time, but his soul recalls it from a previous life. He never believed in soulmates, but if Newt keeps kissing him like that, he might just change his mind.

He isn’t sure when they started moving, but suddenly, the back of his knees hit the bed, so he detaches himself from Newt’s mouth and sits diligently on the mattress. He takes the boy’s left hand and lays a proper kiss right there on its back, upon the small valley of his knuckles, his eyes plunged deeply into his lover’s, then pulls him down eagerly on his lap. He catches Newt as he lands, arms circling his waist like they trained for every night, and Newt’s own hands end up around his neck, thumb perfectly placed to tilt Thomas’s chin up and make him meet his gaze.

They share the widest of grins, the happiest of laughs, before their lips meet again, and they fall into bed like among the clouds.

He knows that matter is universal; that whatever stars are made of, humans are born from it as well; but the gods must have been generous when they created Newt, and added a couple more spoonfuls of stardust into the mix, making him the most celestial of beings.

“Newt…,” he breathlessly moans when rosy lips start to connect moles into constellations along his jaw and down his neck. There is so much more he wants to say, so much he wants to tell him, but his universe has narrowed to one thing and one thing only. His brain is numb to all things except the boy above him, the unexpected love of his life that fate so selfishly trapped into the past. He could spend the rest of eternity kissing Newt, abolish the concept of time altogether so this moment doesn’t have to stop. He could, and he wouldn’t think about it twice.

Eventually, their heated kisses grow more languid, more calm. From passion, comfort is born, and they end up laying side by side like on that very first night. So much has changed in so little time, starting with Thomas himself. The boy who assumed he knew everything, while knowing nothing at all. He watches Newt with the same eyes but sees something else entirely. The boy who once personified the past irrevocably became his future.

Newt breaks their perfect silence first. “Is that what people on Pluto mean when they ask someone to dance?”

Thomas shrugs faintly with a smile, “We’re good with metaphors.”

The sun and the moon. Day and night; by nature designed to never meet. Thomas knows eclipses have a rational explanation, but now that he knows exactly just how lonely the moon feels, he thinks there might be more to astronomy than simple physics. The moon was made for poets and lovers, not for scientists, and a lover he is.

“Do–”

“I love you,” he blurts out before Newt can finish. Three words he never said before, too afraid of the weight they carried. Newt is speechless before him, breath cut short by that reveal. He is so handsome in that flustered state, agape and mystified. From where he lies, Thomas can feel Newt’s heartbeat going oh-so-fast, and he shivers, realising he is the one to do that, to make blood rush to those pale cheeks, to make somebody else feel cherished.

“If this is our last moment together, I need you to know that I love you,” he repeats, staring fondly into eyes that, for the second time today, can’t hold back their tears.

“I’m sorry,” he says in a whisper. “I didn’t mean to make you cry.”

“Don’t be sorry, Tommy;” Newt shakes his head, his nose softly bumping into Thomas’s.   “Please, don’t be sorry for being the best thing that ever happened to me.”

The best thing that ever happened to me. He wants to kiss Newt all over again, just to let him know that he feels the same. He fears words can’t do justice to his feelings; they are too big to fit into a bunch of letters, too powerful to be said. He fears no one before has felt what he is feeling right now, what he feels every time his gaze lands on Newt, because how do people go on living their lives like nothing has changed when their hearts are about to spring from their chests?

“Which do you think is worse?” Newt suddenly asks, taking him by surprise. “To never know happiness, or to know it once at a young age and have to go through life knowing nothing will ever compare?”

“Newt…” he whines, because he is pretty sure a piece of his heart broke with that confession.

“I wish I had never met you,” the young astronomer continues, “because all that’s awaiting me now is a lifetime of living with your ghost.”

He speaks those words as his fingers run up and down Thomas’s arm, and Thomas already knows he will forever miss that touch, and every brush will feel dull in comparison.

“I have to go,” he insists, trying to reason with himself as much as with Newt. “I don’t have a choice.”

“I know,” the blond replies with a sad smile. The hand that doesn’t caress Thomas’s arm is playing with his necklace, the small capsule that, at some point, ended up around his neck.

“You should keep it,” Thomas suggests.

“What?”

“The necklace. Take it. It’s yours.”

It makes Newt giggle naively, but Thomas insists.

“No, literally, it’s yours,” and this time, it does arouse Newt’s curiosity. “I took it from your room before I came to the past. You don’t recognise it?”

“I have never seen it before,” he says, scrunching up his nose.

“That’s strange,” Thomas agrees with the same confusion on his face.

“Stranger than time-travelling?”

The tiniest laugh comes out of his throat. “I guess not.”

Newt shifts a little on the pillow before he says, “Can I ask you a question?” He waits for Thomas to nod before he continues. “When you come from, what is it like, for people like us?”

Newt’s fingers have travelled up to Thomas’s chin at some point, and brush his lower lip from time to time. Perhaps he is considering aiming for that one, the next time he kisses Thomas.

“I wouldn’t say it’s perfect, but it is better. Way better.”

“So we’re not wrong?” Newt asks again, hopefulness barely disguised.

“We’re not wrong,” Thomas confirms, sealing his words with a kiss on Newt’s fingertips. “Don’t ever think that.”

“I’ll try to keep it in mind.”

He doesn’t know if his words were enough to convince Newt, but he still hopes they can bring him some peace. He still remembers what it was like for him, as a kid of the 2000’s, to come to terms with the way he feels about boys. Knowing that Newt had it a thousand times worse than him makes him sick, but it also reminds him of something else he needs an answer to.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“I guess it is only fair,” Newt complies. 

“Why did your family leave England?”

He knows he is rubbing salt into a still very open wound, simply by the way Newt’s smile twitches down for a second.

“There was a boy,” he eventually explains, just as Thomas thought. “His name was Albert, but to me, he was Alby. It didn’t quite work out between us, but in the end, it didn’t make a difference. Everyone found out all the same.”

He swallows a small lump in his throat before he resumes. “He was the son of a powerful man, a Lord, who decided it was only fair to sue me for perverting his son. So we came to America, to make sure I would not be sent to gaol.”

“I’m sorry,” Thomas whispers. He knew those stories happened all the time, that queer people lived with a long legacy of struggle. Still, he carried the hope that Newt hadn’t fallen victim to the cruelty of his people.

“Don’t be,” Newt hushes him with an earnest smile. “If it hadn’t happened, I would have never met you.” Thomas can’t help but smile at that comment. “Here, only Lizzy knows, officially at least, and she hasn’t said a word. It is how we do it. She keeps quiet about me, and I keep quiet about her.”

“About her?”

“You cannot tell me you haven’t figured it out,” Newt pushes, but somehow Thomas remains perfectly oblivious.“Her and Harriet?”

…wait…?

“You mean…?”

“Father doesn’t know, obviously,” Newt resumes, while Thomas feels like a proper fool for not putting two and two together. “I doubt he is aware that women can desire things, let alone one another.”

“But the baby?” he asks, ready to uncover the last unsolved mystery.

“The only reason she got pregnant was so I wouldn’t have to produce an heir,” he explains. “A boy she loved, for sure, but not nearly as much as she loves Hari. She sacrificed herself so I would be free to live my life as I intended, and all I did was throw all of that away by being too imprudent.”

He didn’t think it was possible for a person more selfless than Newt to exist. It must be a family thing, he figures, or a special link that only exists between twins, something that makes you put the other before yourself, in all circumstances; and he knows for fact that this aspect of Elizabeth survived well into Sonya.

“There is something else I fancy to keep, if you do not mind to part with it,” Newt asks, forcing him out of his thoughts.”

“Tell me.”

“That piece of clothing of yours.”

“My hoodie?” he wonders, perplexed. “I thought purple was outrageous.”

“It is. I hate it,” Newt grins unabashed, and Thomas can’t fight the urge to kiss those grinning lips.

“Then it’s yours, love,” he concedes after letting go of his lips.

A dreamy smile immediately forms on Newt’s face. “You did it,” he murmurs.

“Did what?”

“Find a nickname I would like.”

Thomas rolls his eyes to cover up his idiot grin. Gosh, how is it possible to be so whipped? He never thought himself to be a romantic, but Newt seems particularly devoted to making him doubt everything he ever thought he knew about himself.

Both of them know those are the last words they will ever exchange, that when the morning comes, they will be in two different timelines, on two different planets, that all that happened between them will become part of a secret history that will eventually die with them. Thomas wonders how many stories like theirs exist, how many lovers have been deceived by the laws of the universe. How many had to stay goodbye knowing they would never say hello again.

“Close your eyes, love,” he whispers, and Newt complies.

He lays one last kiss on the forehead of his beloved, places the necklace in the palm of his hand, makes sure his hoodie is still on the bed frame where it has been hanging since the very first night, and leaves the love of his life behind.

The door creaks when he closes it.

Minutes later, Newt opens his eyes to a sunless world. All the stars around are lost; looking for something new to orbit around, knowing very well they will never find a star that shines brighter than Thomas. Newt gives them new names, the stars he sees through his glass ceiling: Saudade, Hiraeth, Sehnsucht, Dor. They make up a new constellation, that of two lovers, facing in opposite directions.

It is snowing when Thomas steps outside. Flakes seem to fall slower in the past than they do in his future, and part of him isn’t ready for this dépaysement to end. He already knows reality will have a bitter taste when he steps out of his time machine to see his world hasn’t changed a bit while he was gone. He already knows that one day, he will forget all the details, like how the morning dew smelled different, how honeysuckles bloomed despite the frost, how quiet the world was when his hands were held.

He opens the car door despite the ominous feeling in his gut. Is it all there is to the prophecy? Fall in love and part ways? It feels incomplete somehow; a puzzle seemingly finished, but missing its central piece. A detail so small you might not even notice from afar, but it becomes glaring when you stare at it for too long, only to become the only thing you see. He knows it’s right before his eyes, the one thing that makes it all make sense, yet it’s out of reach, and he has no choice but to leave it be this way.

He sits for a minute behind the steering wheel, contemplates one last time the world he parts with, a world that isn’t his but became his home thanks to a few strangers who were brave enough to turn an alien into a friend. He is just about to start the ignition, just about to press the pedal, when out of the ashes, an ember sparks up again.

“Tommy!”

He thought he would never hear it again, that voice, that name. For a moment, he even thinks his mind is playing some wicked trick on him. But he looks up above the dashboard and Newt is there, dashing under the snow in his direction, dressed in the sweatshirt that still carries Thomas’s scent.

“Newt? What are you doing here?”

A spur of adrenaline drives him out of the car, and he goes up to meet his beloved. He spots right away the puffy eyes, and the matching damp trails running along his cheekbones. Before he can think it through, his hands are already wiping off the tears, lingering on the soft and warm skin.

“I…I’ve found your letter,” Newt explains in a restrained sob.

He frowns, confusion huffed in a cloud of frosty breath. “What letter?”

“The one in the necklace?”

He has no clue what Newt is talking about. He didn’t know the small capsule would be opened, even less so that it could contain something. But whatever it was, it made his love come back to him, and it changed something. He can see it in the way Newt looks at him, like he remembers him from past lives, like he carries the knowledge that they have fallen in love again and again since the dawn of time, and he recalls each of them, every single one, and has never known a purer happiness than the one that comes with loving Thomas.

“Take me with you,” he begs in a whisper.

Four words that stop the track of time. Even the snow seems to stand still, waiting on Thomas to decide. He doesn’t hear the faint noise of the party anymore, only his heartbeat pulsing ever so frantically.

“What?” he murmurs breathlessly,

“To the future, take me with you.”

“Y…You…What?”

“You told me to stop being afraid of what I want,” Newt reminds him. “Well, this is it. This is what I want. I want you. I love you, and I don’t want to spend the rest of my life pretending you never existed. That this thing between us never existed. I don’t want to. I can’t do it.”

“But…what about your sister?” Thomas insists. “She needs you!”

“Lizzy will understand,” he nods with a heartbreaking smile. “And even if she does not, I cannot keep living a life I haven’t chosen for myself. Not after meeting you.”

“But, Newt…”

“Tell me, what is going to happen to me?” he urges. “Since you know what the future holds, tell me. What is awaiting me? What grand plans does the future have in store for a boy like me?”

“You…”

And he tries to remember, piece back together what Sonya told him before he left, and his brain glitches when he finally recalls.

…he disappeared. On Christmas Night, 1890…

…if Newt knew about Pluto, it’s because an alien told him…

…and one day, when that alien decided it was time, it came to abduct him…

There it is, the missing piece. He feels like an idiot for letting it fly under his radar, for ignoring the smallest details which, in the end, mattered the most. No stroke of luck, no random coincidence. Part of human nature is to accept that sometimes, things simply happen, uncorrelated; despite everything, Thomas is ultimately human, and it is a truth universally acknowledged that the gods like to mess with mortals.

“Fuck,” he lets out in a muffled chuckle, smiling at that unbelievable realisation. “Pluto…of course…”

“Tommy?” he hears once again, still that tender voice that grounds him back to reality, back to him.

His destiny, dressed in a purple hoodie. The lonesome boy haunting the attic of his heart. He was his all along. Thomas never defied fate, in the end; never messed with the laws of existence. He followed the universe’s plan step by step, a simple pawn on the chessboard of time and space, who did exactly what he was to do. All along he thought himself to be a Greek hero, beating the odds in a grand battle with the Fates, but even the gods don’t fight against Ananke.

He gives in, stops battling the unbeatable. His story has already been written, and he rather likes the ending. He seals their destiny with a kiss, turning an end into a beginning.

“Are you sure this is what you want?” he asks, cradling cheeks that were made, he knows it now, to fit the palm of his hands.

“I’d follow you anywhere,” Newt says, and it takes everything in Thomas not to kiss him again, kiss him until he forgets his own name.

“Then what are we still doing here?” he smiles, sliding his hand into Newt’s before running off to the car, taking him along.

Euphoria. It is the only word he can put on it, on the ethereal sensation that gets ahold of him as he rushes through the snow, hand in hand with the love of his life, their laughter loud enough to be heard from Mars. He thinks back to that song, the one from their first night together that made him feel eternal. It plays in his mind as they escape.

“Fasten your seatbelt,” he tells Newt once they are seated, and the boy’s pupils turn into question marks, probably the first of a long list.

“Wait, let me–”

He secures Newt’s seatbelt, kisses him one more time while he’s at it, and starts up the car, praying he doesn’t run into a tree this time around.

He doesn’t.

It took some time and a couple of ibuprofens to explain everything in detail, to explain to Sonya and Minho who the strange boy Thomas brought back with him was. It wasn’t like Sonya needed an explanation at all, she recognised him right away, but it was another kettle to fish to make sense of why he was there.

It would have been a lie to say he wasn’t afraid of their reaction. It isn’t everyday that you tell one of your best friends that you’ve fallen in love with one of their ancestors. But after a few dirty jokes coming from Minho that made them both turn red in embarrassment, and a couple of tears from Sonya when Newt took her in his arms, it all fell into place. Eventually, the two lovers excused themselves for the night, and this time, Thomas was the one to guide Newt to the bedroom in the attic, their little sanctuary, lost somewhere among the stars.

He waited for Newt to fall asleep to press a soft kiss on his forehead, and found it waiting for him there, between two pillows; the necklace. So he took it in his hands and opened it up, revealing a small piece of paper that, when unfolded, bore his handwriting despite never having been written. Another trick from the universe, another mystery that was to never be solved, and Thomas huffed in a chuckle. How ironic for a man who believed in nothing but logic to owe his happiness to something his brain would never be able to compute.

After all, the human mind is a wonderful machine.

Dearest Newt,

I’ve never written a letter before. You see, it’s not really something people do where I come from. Or when I come from, I should say. But you are exceptional, so I figure I can make an exception for you.

For the longest time, I couldn’t exactly pinpoint why I was so obsessed with time travel. I didn’t know what I was looking for, what I hoped to find. I think I know now. I spent my whole life trying to know everything, understand how the world worked, decipher every single detail of existence. In the end, I was just looking for myself.

But I found you.

I found you, and suddenly, I knew nothing. I realised my beliefs were just houses of cards, and you were the storm ready to take them down. You taught me the world is beautiful precisely because we fail to understand it, and that it takes courage to accept life as it is. I used to think that our existence being meaningless meant it was pointless, but it is the very meaninglessness of life that makes it worth being lived. It means we are free, free to write our own destiny and not let it be dictated to us, free to live by our own rules, free to travel through time. Free to fall in love, and to love freely.

If I could, I would take you with me. I would show you all the wonderful things I told you about, things you wouldn’t even dare to dream of. I would shower you with love, give you the life you deserve, because you deserve so much, Newt. You deserve the joy and the freedom you’ve been deprived of for so long, for you are the Sun, and I am so thankful for the small galaxy we got to share. Part of me will forever revolve around you. You have changed me, body and soul, and I am a better man now, for I got the chance to be loved by you.

I love you, Newt. Thank you for everything.

Yours, eternally

Tommy

–