An Island in the Stars Read online

  Sam blushed again, which seemed to be his typical response to everything Marcus said. He couldn’t say out loud to Marcus that he’d wished for years to be brave enough to do exactly that. But he also knew that would, in effect, out him. Not that straight guys didn’t listen to K-pop or that they didn’t dye their hair, which a lot of guys did these days. But since Sam had never been seen with a girlfriend, a public act would effectively shove him right out of the closet into the limelight.

  “Which is your favorite boy band?” Marcus asked, snapping Sam out of his musings. “Hate calling them that, but sometimes their dance videos can be so ridiculously retro, even if technically skilled and stylish.”

  Sam wasn’t sure if he should admit who he found totally hot. “Well, I like Big Bang, BTS, B.A.P., EXO-K, TVXQ—”

  “Okay, who’s your fave guy in a boy band?”

  Sam ducked his head, rubbing his neck, so edgy and nervous he felt like he was sitting on an anthill. What was Marcus suggesting? That Sam was… gay? Marcus couldn’t possibly know that—unless he had eyes and half a brain and had seen every embarrassing reaction Sam had ever had to him.

  He decided to answer. Perhaps Marcus wouldn’t even recognize the names.

  “I like Jungkook and Taeyang….” He racked his brain for more names, but his memories evaded capture. He’d chosen the names on instinct because they reminded him of Marcus, bad boys with swagger, strength, flirtatiousness, and sex appeal in equal measure (even if sometimes they were so androgynous in appearance they could be mistaken for girls).

  Marcus whistled low. “Jungkook, eh? Let me guess. ‘Boy In Luv’ from the Skool Luv Affair album? Still… only bad boys? I didn’t expect that. I assumed you’d go for the more… pretty guys.”

  Weren’t all K-pop and J-pop boy band members pretty and dreamy and smoking hot? Sam frowned, bristling defensively. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Before Marcus could answer and make the situation even worse, Sam snapped back, “Who do you like, then?”

  Marcus tapped a finger on his chin, obviously feigning serious pondering. “V’s cute in his schoolboy shorts. So’s T.O.P. with his blue hair and posh attitude, not to mention Zelo’s awesome dancing skills in ‘One Shot.’”

  Sam licked his lips nervously. Was it a coincidence Marcus had picked the names of all the cuties from exactly the same bands Sam had named as his favorites, and in exactly the same order? Obviously Marcus knew the subject well enough not to be fooled by Sam’s attempts at deflection.

  “I…. This is too surreal.” Sam couldn’t believe he was having this conversation with his secret crush. None of it made any sense. Marcus referred to these guys as cute—but as far as Sam knew, Marcus wasn’t gay.

  Could K-pop and J-pop make Marcus gay? No, that was preposterous. Unless… he’d been gay all this time. No. Impossible. Sam shook his head at the mere notion.

  Marcus stretched his back and arms to pop his joints. “It’s well after sundown. We should get some shut-eye. The sun’s probably going to be up in a few hours anyway.”

  It seemed Marcus had decided to move on from the subject. Perhaps he’d figured out Sam was so boring he couldn’t even make an interesting topic exciting and worthwhile. Naturally Sam felt rotten, his mental image of himself as sucking at small talk confirmed.

  Then Marcus said, “We should probably sleep next to each other on this stone bed for warmth and safety.”

  Sam gulped. Sleeping next to his dream guy all night? He’d lose his mind—or bust a nut. Either way, it was trouble with a capital T. Nonetheless, it wasn’t like they had a lot of choices when it came to their sleeping arrangements. Sam didn’t want to sleep alone on an alien world in the dark.

  Marcus laid their winter coats on the stone bed, folded the clean towel Sam had in his backpack from his cancelled gym class into a pillow for them both, and sat down to take his boots off. Sam followed suit. Once they’d stripped down to their socks, jeans, and T-shirts, Sam lay back on the wide, long stone bed, using his coat as a sheet and partial blanket. Then Marcus lay down next to him. Sam swallowed and turned away from Marcus, hoping the position would hide inopportune boners. But then Marcus spooned him from behind, and Sam knew his plan had royally backfired.

  “Sammy? It’s okay to miss home.” Marcus’s words were at once soothing and… not.

  “Yeah.” He had nothing else to give at that moment or he’d break apart.

  “Good night, Sammy,” Marcus whispered behind him, snapping off the flashlight he had used in the growing darkness to guide their way around the small space.

  “G-good night, Marcus.” Sam hoped he hadn’t sounded too squeaky. As Marcus’s arms tightened around him, keeping him warm and safe, Sam decided he was in a special hell reserved for losers like him. Shaking the thoughts aside proved difficult, but in the end he managed.

  Sam had initially foreseen trouble falling asleep on an alien moon. But Marcus’s warmth behind him, the soothing sound of singing ozzies, and the darkness blanketing them soon sent him on his way to dreamland.

  SAM STARTED awake, a booming sound above scaring the shit out of him.

  “Oh my God, what the fuck?”

  “Calm down. It’s okay. It’s just a storm, that’s all.” Marcus’s soothing tone placated Sam’s frayed nerves, even though he could barely make Marcus out in the dimness.

  “The sun came up hours ago, but only for a moment,” Marcus continued. “Then clouds rolled in out of nowhere. You were right about everything. The weather’s unpredictable. And the cloud cover is pretty damn dense. Can’t see the stars at all.”

  Sam wiped the sleep out of his eyes and sat up. “You’ve been outside already?”

  “Uh-huh. When the sun rose. Now it’s pitch-black. Decided to let you sleep since we can’t see two feet in front of us.” Marcus handed Sam the filled water bottle. “Went to get some more food and water. You should drink some. You didn’t drink enough last night.”

  Sam didn’t feel like arguing. Truth was, he was thirsty. Greedily he downed half the bottle in one long gulp. “Thanks.” He stood, pressing his palms on his back to straighten his spine. “It didn’t get as cold last night as I expected.”

  Marcus smiled shortly. “No. It was warm and comfy. Maybe the weather’s to blame. I mean, heat gathers, and then we get a storm, right? That’s usually how it works, isn’t it?”

  Sam shrugged and stretched his legs. He needed to do his yoga but didn’t want to exercise in front of Marcus. “On Earth, yeah. Here? Who knows.”

  Marcus nodded absentmindedly and sauntered out the door. Nothing blocked it; he’d moved the slab aside. Sam followed him, needing to relieve himself. But he couldn’t very well take a piss in a holy place, could he?

  Once he got to the edge of the balcony and got a good look at the sky through the roof oculus and the windows, Sam figured they could be stranded indoors for days.

  A bright blue light flashed on the dark horizon without warning. Surprisingly low lightning painted a silhouette of gigantic trees in the black-and-blue sky. Then the pace of the strikes quickened, and soon the midnight-dark sky blazed every few minutes. The electric pulsing of the clouds was like a bubbling witch’s cauldron.

  Yet it was eerily quiet at first, with no thunder, as though the stormy show was muted. Then the lightning dwindled and a dark blanket of clouds returned, covering the island with gloom.

  But the spectacle was far from over. A low rumble heralded the full awakening of the storm. Sam’s and Marcus’s eyes could no longer track how many lightning flashes burst forth above their heads. Looked like hundreds in the span of a single minute, both horizontal sparks between clouds and vertical streaks from the clouds to the ground and back up again.

  The wind picked up speed, and then came hot waves of rain, beating down the jungle with ferocity. Rustling from the brutally assaulted foliage grew louder. The hammering of the rain on the building almost drowned out the thunder’s roar, and Sam shuddered, thinking about how the deluge would have pelt
ed them had they been outside.

  A black cloud cover churned and swirled menacingly above them and shot lightning bolts every few seconds. The stormy skies appeared like rivers of fire or bright lanterns, twinkling and sparking.

  Lightning formed inside thunderclouds when static charges accumulated, and Sam surmised that the charge difference between the ground and the storm clouds had to rise into the hundreds of millions of volts. He was both a tad scared and a lot inspired by nature’s raw power performing before his very eyes.

  He wasn’t sure what could cause such an awesome display of nature and its elements, but he ventured a guess (thanks to Marcus) that the wind, the sun, the ocean, the rain, and the island mountain together created the effect. It was a logical deduction since the tropics on Earth often suffered from hard monsoon rains, violent thunder and lightning storms, and rough winds.

  The storm’s ferocity reminded Sam of what he’d read about the Roaring Forties, a phenomenon of stormy air currents in the southern hemisphere, where there was little to no land to work as a windbreak.

  “Insane.” Marcus sounded awed, clearly amazed by nature’s violent spectacle.

  Sam was more afraid than fascinated. He wished he were as brave as Marcus, but he wasn’t. “I need to… you know.”

  Marcus glared at him. “You’re not going out there. What if that rain is, like… acid or something? We don’t know.”

  Sam growled. “I’m not peeing inside, or just wherever like an animal. But fine. I’ll find a safe spot, close to the outside but not quite there. Okay?”

  Marcus narrowed his eyes in suspicion. “If you’re not back in two minutes—”

  “Got it.” Sam made a mad dash toward the other end of the balcony in search of a convenient spot to take a leak. Why the heck were there no stairs to or from this level? Didn’t the lizzies like them?

  “There’s a small window with a ledge near you,” Marcus yelled after him. “I used it. So can you.”

  Darn know-it-all. Sam found the window and the tiny protruding ledge. He stepped on it and found it solid but kept a firm hand on the wall the entire time. He unzipped and did his business. As he emptied his bladder, he stared out into the jungle that was being shaken and stirred by the raging storm. Sam felt exposed and vulnerable in the face of so much hostility from the environment. He finished quickly, zipped up, and rushed back to Marcus, who at the moment equaled safety.

  “In here, Sam,” Marcus called out softly from the relative privacy of their quarters.

  Sam dashed in and sat on the bed, watching as Marcus studied the scrolls they’d taken with them with Sam’s flashlight, set on low to save the batteries. “Found anything good?”

  Marcus harrumphed and chucked the scroll onto the bed. Sam huffed indignantly. The scroll had survived the downfall of the temple but might not survive one pissed-off jock.

  “Nope,” Marcus said. “This is fucking useless. There are no panic rooms, no armories, no power or generator rooms, not even a damn pantry in this temple. Just loads of bedrooms, a couple of bathrooms, and ceremonial areas where the lizzies could play stuff the sausage and get hit by lightning.”

  Sam blushed and cringed at Marcus’s words. But since Marcus sounded sullen and defeated, he decided to steer their conversation elsewhere for general morale. “Earlier… you mentioned… comics.”

  “Did I?” Marcus slumped against the wall, eyes closed.

  “Uh-huh.” Sam puzzled how best to coax some answers from Marcus. “So… you like comics? Like, um, anime or manga…?”

  Marcus shrugged. “They’re okay. I mean, sometimes I think mixing sweet innocence and little girls in school uniforms with sexually explicit, ultra-violent, bloody and gory imagery is too much. It gets a little… been-there-done-that after a while.” Then he smirked at Sam. “But that’s not what you really wanted to ask me, is it?” Sam gulped, and Marcus chuckled. “What you really want to know is if I like a specific subgenre of anime: yaoi and BL.”

  Sam gasped and went beet-red.

  “It’s okay. Simon told me what you’re into.”

  Sam squeezed his mouth into a disapproving line. “Oh, did he now?”

  “Only ’cause I asked him. I was curious about what you kept reading so intently on your laptop. So Simon did a bit of cybersleuthing for me.”

  “You mean snooping into someone else’s private business.”

  “That too. But he only did it because of me, so if you want to be angry, be angry with me.”

  “Oh, I am.” Sam chewed on the inside of his cheek. “So… do you like yaoi?”

  Marcus shrugged. “It’s okay. Some are good, some aren’t. I admit, though, that I like boys’ love comics more than strict yaoi, where things get a bit predictable after a while.”

  Sam disagreed. He thought the plotlines were different and unique each time.

  “I follow a few BL webcomics religiously. Such as Avialae—Gannet’s too cute for words even if he can be obnoxious. Transfusions—Joa’s hot for a vampire. Demon of the Underground—Pogo kinda reminds me of you. Buying Time—so adorable and sad that I cried for like an hour. The Less Than Epic Adventures of TJ and Amal—these two are so realistic and just a hoot. Light Romantic—that kissy-face janitor is too funny, and that witty banter rocks! Teahouse—too bad it was discontinued ’cause it was awesome—”

  “Oh. My. God.” Sam was blown away. He wasn’t sure if he was furious, exalted, or a mixture of both. “How the hell do you even know about those?”

  Marcus laughed. “You of course. Who else? But, like I said, I found a few on my own. As you can see, though, I prefer BL to yaoi, like A Foreign Love Affair. I just feel like they’ve become too violent and gory. All those guys having sex but never admitting they’re gay. Maybe I’ve outgrown yaoi. I mean, I still follow a few, like Maiden Rose, but I liked the original video animation better than the actual comic. That said, it’s not that I mind yaoi, if and when I’m in the mood, but—”

  “Name even one yaoi comic right the F now,” Sam insisted, even though Marcus had already mentioned two. Sam couldn’t wrap his brain around the likelihood that Marcus was into the same things he was. That’d mean the world had gone surreal while Sam had been busy blinking and running away.

  “I do not want to play around because I like it—the whole collection of stories was so hawt and cute and dirty in a titillating way. Yatamomo—Momo’s such a slutty goofball. Electric Delusion and Peach Boys—hot best friends getting it on. These spring to mind,” Marcus retorted.

  He was clearly undeterred, as cool as a cucumber, while Sam felt like he was sitting on a hill of fire ants. Marcus cringed for a blink of an eye when he mentioned the names of the ones he liked. Sam understood. He’d reacted the same way to the yaoi manga that were all filled with lots of explicit sex scenes. And both Electric Delusion and Peach Boys were stories of friends who had sex and loved each other.

  “What about you? What’s your favorite boys’ love?” Marcus asked.

  Sam went through his mental Rolodex. “Ten Count is good. It’s got depth, intriguing characters, and some spicy… uh, sex scenes.” He ducked his head and tried to get a handle on his feelings. He licked his lips and went on. “The psychology behind the plot is fascinating, and it’s one of my favorites. But… like you, I’m into Yatamomo by Harada. It’s lighthearted and fun.”

  Marcus nodded. “Yeah. Then there’s Under Grand—”

  “—Hotel,” Sam finished for him, breathing out the word in shock.

  Marcus nodded, not appearing to have noticed Sam’s shaken state of mind. “That was kind of brutal in many ways, the setting being a prison and all. But of all the stuff I’ve read over the years, that one had the greatest impact on me, making it memorable. I suppose the reason is Swordfish and Sen as seme and uke, the traditional roles firmly in place.”

  “Yeah.” Sam frowned, more in puzzlement than anything else, saying anything to say something.

  Marcus shrugged. “I didn’t think Swordfish would ev
er give a blow job to anyone. But love changed him. However, like in pretty much all the yaoi and manga I know, the role switch for him was a rape scene. Disappointing, though instrumental to the plot. Nonetheless, I thought it was interesting how the comparison was made between how Swordfish fucked Sen and how the Warden raped Sen. That showed well that anal sex doesn’t have to be brutal and that it isn’t rape if both men are willing—and use plenty of lube.”

  Sam heard Marcus’s voice and words faintly, echoing inside his head like a dream or a distant memory. The whole conversation felt unreal; Sam couldn’t grab ahold of his sanity. Both of them had reacted with the same cringe to yaoi involving friends and/or neighbors falling in love…. Sam didn’t think that was a coincidence. They were on the same wavelength. The same topics spoke to them both.

  “You draw comics too, don’t you?” Marcus asked, startling Sam.

  “Huh? H-how’d you know about that?”

  “Same way I know everything about you. Made it my business to find out since you’re always busy running away from me.”

  Sam blushed with embarrassment and looked away. Then he remembered something. “Is that what you meant when you doubted me wanting to be a scientist?”

  “Yeah. I assumed art was what you were into the most.”

  “No. That’s just a hobby. I mean, I’ve thought about maybe writing and drawing my own boys’ love comic but in the end I want to be a scientist. When I was twelve, at summer camp we got to participate in a dig within an ancient Native American burial ground. It was amazing. For the longest time I wanted to become an archaeologist.”

  “Huh. I had that phase when I watched the Indiana Jones movies.”

  Sam smiled. “That too. If my math and physics scores were higher, I’d want to be an astrophysicist. I’d love to study exoplanets.”

  Marcus snorted. His laugh wasn’t mean or derisive. Sam thought it must have been his way of encouraging Sam. “We’re on one, in case you missed it. Well, on an exomoon.”