Eclipse (PG)
Eclipse (~ 1,000 words) PG
Notes: For tonight's lunar eclipse!
Eclipse
By the time they make it outside--delayed fifteen minutes by Rodney losing his gloves and Cash being too excited to stay still so John could put on his leash--there's a crowd of people gathered out on the beach, shadowy figures huddled together like dock pylons. John counts maybe twenty, a large group for a Nantucket winter, and all faces he knows when they come close enough for him to make them out. Despite offers for them to join in--there's chili and coffee, like it's a tailgating party--and requests for Rodney to explain the physics to them (which Rodney does, between swift gulps of coffee), they eventually make their way out to the quiet of open sand.
The wind's whipped all the clouds away, a rare thing for a New England winter, and here and there it's stirred the waves to whitecaps that the darkening moon and the stars pick out in silver. Boston isn't even a suggestion on the other side of the horizon, city lights unable to stretch fluorescent fingers this far out. John wades through the sand, the heavy pull of it on his feet, and stays close to Rodney who's too busy looking up.
"It's the last one until 2010," Rodney had said, and had insisted on coming out if there was even the slightest hope of seeing the moon through perpetual cloud. And John had said it isn't like you haven't seen cooler things, black holes and quasars and whatever, and Rodney had become red and flustered and told John it's the principle of the thing, shut up, we're going out.
The Earth's shadow walks its slow, curved way across the Moon, Rodney pointing out Saturn when a small golden dot appears on the Moon's dark side. And slowly, slowly, the stars come out, another handful of them with each blink, some of them seeming so close John imagines being up in a plane, up up up at the razor edge of earth and space, skimming right under light that silvers metal and the dark shadows of his hands.
"You know Orion, right?" Rodney asks, breath sudden and warm and close. John nods, though in the confusion of stars he has a harder time picking out the three bright stars of Orion's belt. He follows as Rodney moves around the sky, effortless as though he's walked up there himself, pointing to things only telescopes have collected: the newborn star at HH34 in Orion's powerful shoulder, the open cluster M35 beyond his upraised arm, the nebulae he wears on his belt like trophies, Gemini, the Cat's Eye nebula in Draco and the gigantic cluster of galaxies called Abell 2218, a tangle of bright disks trillions of miles away, the Andromeda galaxy in the west.
"NCG 7619 and 7626 are the focal points for the Pegasus cluster," Rodney whispers, breath still warm, eyes bright where the starlight catches in them. He's a dark, solid shape at John's shoulder, pressed to his side, the sturdy bone and muscle of his body softened by his jacket and scarf, the companionable arm laced through John's own. And all this time the Earth's shadow walks, walks, walks to totality, and darkness swallows up the last sliver of the Moon so it's only stars on the endless, restless surface of the Atlantic.
Rodney's voice follows the rhythm of the waves, a cadence to it that's become familiar over the past nine months, in-out, in-out, a tide of explanation that's carried driftwood of Rodney's knowledge up to John's waiting hands. The Milky Way spills halfway down the arc of the sky, and it's crazy, Rodney says, that we're just this little point, that there's so much else out there, but there's something about the way Rodney talks--maybe his endless confidence, or maybe that he really does know--that brings all of that mystery within reach.
The umbra loosens its grip on the Moon, sliding back its red curtain to reveal silver again. John's neck aches and his muscles have locked up from the cold, but he finds he doesn't want to move from the small space of sand they've carved out for themselves, where the ooohing and aaahing from the crowd doesn't intrude too much. Cash tugs on his leash, impatient with the standing still.
"We should go in," Rodney says reluctantly. He's still looking up, too, still like Rodney so rarely is.
"Yeah," John agrees.
"Yeah."
They need a few more minutes, but leave before the eclipse ends and sends the sky back to normality again. Rodney walks a strange line between subdued and enthusiastic, quiet one moment before bursting out with "that was cool, too bad we don't have a telescope, I should build one, the commercial ones are overpriced pieces of crap, but I won't be able to grind my own mirrors" and then subsiding into silence again. John's body protests the lateness and the standing still in the cold, and walking through the sand seems harder than it was.
"Cold," Rodney says, and casts a longing look at the crowd that's just now breaking up, wandering to their cars or their own houses.
The light through their windows is yellow and prosaic, but it's warm all the same. Planck yowls irritably as they tumble inside along with cold air. Cash rushes for his water bowl. Rodney and John wander upstairs.
"That was cool," John says from under his t-shirt. He pulls on a clean one and strips down to his boxers. Not that it's a night for anything less than flannel, but sliding under cotton and down, feeling it warm against his body, feeling Rodney sliding in next to him, bare flesh and bare flesh... it's worth it.
"It was cool," Rodney says, and reaches to turn out the light.
They lie there for a while, too drugged by cold and something like twelve-year-old wonder to do anything much. Rodney's breath is warm and minty on John's face when he hitches closer, runs a tentative hand up John's arm. John shivers, leans in for a kiss that's mostly his own breath against Rodney's still-cold mouth and nose, a slow coming-together that doesn't really go anywhere, just to slow hands and Rodney's eyes slowly closing, and the in-out, in-out of the waves.
-end-
Notes: For tonight's lunar eclipse!
Eclipse
By the time they make it outside--delayed fifteen minutes by Rodney losing his gloves and Cash being too excited to stay still so John could put on his leash--there's a crowd of people gathered out on the beach, shadowy figures huddled together like dock pylons. John counts maybe twenty, a large group for a Nantucket winter, and all faces he knows when they come close enough for him to make them out. Despite offers for them to join in--there's chili and coffee, like it's a tailgating party--and requests for Rodney to explain the physics to them (which Rodney does, between swift gulps of coffee), they eventually make their way out to the quiet of open sand.
The wind's whipped all the clouds away, a rare thing for a New England winter, and here and there it's stirred the waves to whitecaps that the darkening moon and the stars pick out in silver. Boston isn't even a suggestion on the other side of the horizon, city lights unable to stretch fluorescent fingers this far out. John wades through the sand, the heavy pull of it on his feet, and stays close to Rodney who's too busy looking up.
"It's the last one until 2010," Rodney had said, and had insisted on coming out if there was even the slightest hope of seeing the moon through perpetual cloud. And John had said it isn't like you haven't seen cooler things, black holes and quasars and whatever, and Rodney had become red and flustered and told John it's the principle of the thing, shut up, we're going out.
The Earth's shadow walks its slow, curved way across the Moon, Rodney pointing out Saturn when a small golden dot appears on the Moon's dark side. And slowly, slowly, the stars come out, another handful of them with each blink, some of them seeming so close John imagines being up in a plane, up up up at the razor edge of earth and space, skimming right under light that silvers metal and the dark shadows of his hands.
"You know Orion, right?" Rodney asks, breath sudden and warm and close. John nods, though in the confusion of stars he has a harder time picking out the three bright stars of Orion's belt. He follows as Rodney moves around the sky, effortless as though he's walked up there himself, pointing to things only telescopes have collected: the newborn star at HH34 in Orion's powerful shoulder, the open cluster M35 beyond his upraised arm, the nebulae he wears on his belt like trophies, Gemini, the Cat's Eye nebula in Draco and the gigantic cluster of galaxies called Abell 2218, a tangle of bright disks trillions of miles away, the Andromeda galaxy in the west.
"NCG 7619 and 7626 are the focal points for the Pegasus cluster," Rodney whispers, breath still warm, eyes bright where the starlight catches in them. He's a dark, solid shape at John's shoulder, pressed to his side, the sturdy bone and muscle of his body softened by his jacket and scarf, the companionable arm laced through John's own. And all this time the Earth's shadow walks, walks, walks to totality, and darkness swallows up the last sliver of the Moon so it's only stars on the endless, restless surface of the Atlantic.
Rodney's voice follows the rhythm of the waves, a cadence to it that's become familiar over the past nine months, in-out, in-out, a tide of explanation that's carried driftwood of Rodney's knowledge up to John's waiting hands. The Milky Way spills halfway down the arc of the sky, and it's crazy, Rodney says, that we're just this little point, that there's so much else out there, but there's something about the way Rodney talks--maybe his endless confidence, or maybe that he really does know--that brings all of that mystery within reach.
The umbra loosens its grip on the Moon, sliding back its red curtain to reveal silver again. John's neck aches and his muscles have locked up from the cold, but he finds he doesn't want to move from the small space of sand they've carved out for themselves, where the ooohing and aaahing from the crowd doesn't intrude too much. Cash tugs on his leash, impatient with the standing still.
"We should go in," Rodney says reluctantly. He's still looking up, too, still like Rodney so rarely is.
"Yeah," John agrees.
"Yeah."
They need a few more minutes, but leave before the eclipse ends and sends the sky back to normality again. Rodney walks a strange line between subdued and enthusiastic, quiet one moment before bursting out with "that was cool, too bad we don't have a telescope, I should build one, the commercial ones are overpriced pieces of crap, but I won't be able to grind my own mirrors" and then subsiding into silence again. John's body protests the lateness and the standing still in the cold, and walking through the sand seems harder than it was.
"Cold," Rodney says, and casts a longing look at the crowd that's just now breaking up, wandering to their cars or their own houses.
The light through their windows is yellow and prosaic, but it's warm all the same. Planck yowls irritably as they tumble inside along with cold air. Cash rushes for his water bowl. Rodney and John wander upstairs.
"That was cool," John says from under his t-shirt. He pulls on a clean one and strips down to his boxers. Not that it's a night for anything less than flannel, but sliding under cotton and down, feeling it warm against his body, feeling Rodney sliding in next to him, bare flesh and bare flesh... it's worth it.
"It was cool," Rodney says, and reaches to turn out the light.
They lie there for a while, too drugged by cold and something like twelve-year-old wonder to do anything much. Rodney's breath is warm and minty on John's face when he hitches closer, runs a tentative hand up John's arm. John shivers, leans in for a kiss that's mostly his own breath against Rodney's still-cold mouth and nose, a slow coming-together that doesn't really go anywhere, just to slow hands and Rodney's eyes slowly closing, and the in-out, in-out of the waves.
-end-