Chapter Text
Martyn takes Ren's hand. Like, literally.
“Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” Martyn sputters, following him anyway. His hands are calloused, just not as his. It's roughly the same size as Martyn's, fingers just slimmer and fingertips harder due to his instrument playing. Ren's hands are warm and, very, very nice to hold, and he's. Soft about holding Martyn.
“Just outside.”
Ren leads him outside of the tavern, out to the steps of the bar's porch. Skizz, the Fates and Grian (drunkenly) watch them go.
He pushes the door open, inviting the cold nighttime air in. The golden yellow and orange of the desert has faded long into a deep purple, the oaken floor almost black. Black trimmed lanterns emit a dim, warm glow. Crickets chirp and a few moths hover over the lights. The moon, normal sized and beaming brightly casts her gaze on this silent town. Stars twinkle overhead, shining.
They're still holding hands, a fact Martyn's very aware of.
It's not cold enough where he can see his breath for, but he can definitely feel it. Looking at Ren, who's a little shorter—he sees his mouth move upwards in a cute little awkward smile, and his very faint stubble, a lot like Martyn's own. Ren's eyes are a dark blue out here compared to its stony blue inside, and when he's a lot closer, like this, Martyn can see a little scar on his eyebrow, and a mole on the far side of his cheekbone.
Martyn looks away, embarrassed.
“It's beautiful outside.” Ren breaks the silence. Martyn snorts, “What, is this how you're courting me? The classic—oh but you're beautiful..er—shebang?” He grins.
“Wh—well, not really!.. I mean, it's not that bad of a shebang.” Ren blushes. “But it is beautiful. Even in the dark. I mean, it's not.. a forest, or anything better. But it's still nature ya know.” He rambles. “The desert.” He smiles, with all teeth. “If you want to hear it, you're more beautiful.”
Martyn laughs, genuinely.
Ren's canine teeth are sharp, he notices. He has nice teeth, nice mouth and nice hair and nice hands—
Ren lets go of his hand.
“I don't need to tell you that though- I- when you marry me—” Right. “Ah, ah, why do you want to marry me?” Martyn interrupts.
“I mean, even if you can, how would you find a place for us to wed? And with what?” He sits down on the porch steps, adjusting his large coat behind him.
“I,” Ren says, sitting down next to Martyn, gazing up at the sky. “I heard once, this thing about the stars. “How there should be a million of them—and more than that, up there.” He points. “But we only see a bit of them.”
“It’s because they're too far away for us to see. It'd take years for them to come to us, to see them in entirety.” He pauses.
“Skizz told me this when I was younger. And—after that, I used to wait out in the dark, for the evening. And the evening the next. Waiting. I watched the moon phase from full to dark, for what felt like no time at all.”
He adjusts his hair, tucking a few brown strands behind his ears. He looks at Martyn, blue eyes sparkling.
“I thought maybe, I could see a few stars come to me. I didn't know any better, I didn't know.”
“Yet in all my time waiting, I also never wondered what it'd be like for when they would come here. A bit like Penelope and Odysseus. Penelope was waiting for her Odysseus yet-. I don't think he ever came back the same. He returned- but he never came home.”
“Oh.” Martyn says. He doesn't know what to say.
“But when we see them, it'd still be stars. Bright.” Ren says, smiling. Martyn breathes out weakly.
“Very.” He blinks, still not understanding where this is going.
Ren nods. “Maybe the world's different now.” He kicks sand with the toe of his boot. The wind whistles, and he shivers. “But I think- because- we still have stars, and they might not be as bright as—well, all of them—I’m. Glad we do. I don't—I’m not great with people,” he says.
“But I think they're like stars. I'm young, I know, but all of the people I've known—I imagined them as almost as bright as all of the stars combined. I thought they were. I thought they were enough, a good enough Pretend.”
Martyn raises an eyebrow, blue eyes questioning.
Ren coughs, cheeks heating up. He scratches his chin, looking down at the ground.
“And I thought I really would need to keep on waiting outside in the shade of the evening to the end of time to see all of the stars in its- whole-” He looks into Martyn's eyes. “Everything, shining at me.” Ren says. “But. I don't know. I think, you're someone who'll teach me not to wait- I know. —You have—because I know you're universes and galaxies of stars in just one man—and that you're the brightness I was waiting for this whole time.” He says.
“I think when I saw you, I knew I was done with waiting.” Ren breathes out. “I don't know you. I just met you—I think that's good. You're nothing like Odysseus, not different in that way. You're like a field of flowers in this world that has none.”
“Oh.” Martyn replies lamely.
“I'm not good with people,” he repeats, rambling. Martyn blushes a deep red. “But I want to be good with you.”
“I want to tell you things I think about.” He takes Martyn's hands in his. “I'm poor, but my mind is not. My love is nothing but full for you.”
Ren's hands are warm, and Martyn sinks into it.
The heart is an eye, and Martyn's has been opened.
Let me look at you, Ren had asked him. And in spite of himself, Martyn agreed.
Times are hard, and getting harder. So is the world, and they both go hand in hand in circles in the playground of life, the world dark and darker all the time. And day by day Martyn's hunger grows and will weakens. Ren said he knows nothing. Martyn knows less.
“How does your brain work—with all of this?” Martyn asks. “It works cause it's mine,” he says.
“And when you'll have me, it'll be yours too. Until every star shines visibly. You have me.”
“When I sing my song, the world will join in. Spring will come.” He says it confidently, like the green grass is below his feet, like the flowers already bloom in every corner. He squeezes Martyn's hands as he says it.
A memory floats to the surface. It's Martyn, when he was a young boy, younger than he is now, and not as hungry. It's Martyn, not as lonely. He had a hand clutching a flower (like he is now) knee deep in a golden-green field, siblings he can barely remember the name of laughing and running near him. The sun kissed him on the nose and the spring air hugged him tight. He walked up and down the soft meadow collecting flowers—roses, violets, iris blossoms and dandelions. Saccharine fragrance spreading up to the skies above, enveloping the little boy in a bubble of warmth and happiness.
The earth, back then, seemed to smile.
“And if we do—who will provide the wedding bands?” Martyn asks.
“The rivers will. Gold to be a-flashing fit for your hand.”
“Well, if you're so able—” he teases. “Tell me who'll lay the wedding table?” “The trees will. And they'll bend their branches to the ground, apples and maple and almonds.”
He is genuine, naive.
“So when you sing your song, the one you're working on—that will all happen, and spring will come again?” He turns the paper flower over in his hand, smiling.
“Yes.” Ren lets go of his hand for the second time this evening.
Spring. Spring has not come in so long—
Martyn can stand on soft grass again, feeling the sun kiss his cheeks and shoulders, Martyn can eat berries that are good, Martyn can eat. The air will be alive again. Hyacinths, lily's, poppies and daffodils, lavenders and lilacs will all rise from the dead, awaking from a sweet song.
“Why don't you sing it then?”
“It isn't finished.”
Martyn places two fingers under Ren's chin, lifting it to look at him. “Sing it. You wanna take me home?”
“Yes.” He says shyly. Ren's face is pink and alive. Martyn feels like he's the same, mirroring Ren's little smile, and the flush on his cheeks and the beat of his heart.
Martyn lets go. “Sing the song.”
He sings.
Ren's voice is both earthy, nature-like and breathy, ethereal and angelic.
Suddenly and silently, the paper flower changed. It felt like breathing—thin white paper petals coloring into a disorienting red. Red—red painted the flower from pale to red. In Martyn's hand he feels tiny thorns grow from tattered newspaper, stem forming from inanimate to alive. A voice, no, a nature so surreal it is like a searing pain that burns through his skin. A peony that blooms so vibrant and sweet-smelling, something unreal in the palm of his hand.
Ren's voice is the only sound in this mute world and Martyn loves it like that.
Martyn can smell a faint springdew mist in the air, and it's pretty. The carnation in his hands is just as intricate and real as—a real one.
It is.
“How'd you do that?” he asked, wonder in his voice.
“I don't know.” Ren says. “The song’s not finished though.” He speaks like it's normal, like a writer, an artist. Like he doesn't know—that Martyn’s heart is irrevocably changed.
“Even so, it can do this?” He says. “Oh my— oh my gods Ren, you have to finish it.”
“..I know.” Ren smiles.
“I..okay—” Martyn replies. “When we'll wed. Sure—” he stumbles over his words, embarrassed. "The trees will lay the wedding table.”
And Ren says: “And the riverbed’s gonna give us our wedding bands.”
I mean, it might be catastrophic, Martyn thinks. He knows he's lulled—taken in, enchanted. But sure, he thinks. He'll fall. He'll wed.
I love you, is what Ren sings. I will too, is Martyn's reprise.
They wed.