Chapter Text
Late Summer 2028, Cambridge
r/relationship_advice • Posted by u/ThrowRA_missingthesun
I (21M) and my SO (26NB) spent a night with my BFF (21M) on our honeymoon and fell in love with him. We want to create a more permanent arrangement, but he is now ghosting us.
Throwaway account because my BFF is a genius control freak who will find this asap the second he looks at the internet.
I’ll try to be as brief as possible, but a bit of background because it’s complicated. I had two best friends growing up — only one is important for this post, my BFF. I’ll call him ‘The Sun’ because it feels like our lives revolve around him. I realised fairly early on as a teenager that I was bi (I now identify as pan), but The Sun always came across as ace (if asked, he’d reply he was straight and ‘not interested in anything like that’). I should probably mention that he’s secretive af and, as I said above, a total control freak.
When we went to uni he met a girl and fell in love, so I thought he was maybe demi, but generally just figured he was never going to be interested in me, which was a shame cause I’d always wondered, y’know? At uni I also met my SO (the Love Of My Life, but that’s another story) so the four of us would do the whole double-date thing.
In our final year we discovered that a) The Sun is as far from straight as I am and b) he & my SO had cheated on me and The Sun’s gf with each other (just once — another complicated story).
My SO and I were okay, I was mostly annoyed that The Sun had me think he was unavailable, especially since he — to my surprise — indicated that he might have been interested in me if he’d known I felt like that. In short my SO and I would have been happy to try a foursome of some kind, except the gf was having none of it and literally said ‘Hands off’.
Fast forward some months to the end of uni, and me & my SO got married. Shortly afterwards The Sun confessed to his gf that he’d been lying to her for 3 years (unrelated personal stuff, he’s got issues shall we say). In response she freaked out & broke up with him, which I had warned him might happen. To try to cheer him up we invited him along for our honeymoon, and one night managed to get him into bed, which was basically a dream come true. What happened next is difficult to explain, but it’s like we fell in love with him that night? Not because of the sex just… it’s like he put a spell on us? (Which sounds corny as hell I know, but that’s what it feels like.) We would happily throw all our own plans out the window to be with him.
Ever since that night, however, he’s wanted nothing to do with us and we’re just sort of stuck in limbo. We’ve done our best to let him know that we will do basically anything to have him back (if his gf won’t), but he’s ghosting us and has never even explained why he’s run away, or why he won’t talk to us. We think he might be trying to get back together with his gf since we know they genuinely love each other, despite everything.
Any suggestions? We will see them both at Graduation in a couple of months’ time, and presumably he won’t literally run away if he sees us. We basically feel like we’re currently living in darkness out of the sunlight and need a way back in.
. . . . . .
Sunshine, real or metaphorical, was in short supply.
Joshua Levin, the author of the Reddit post, was frowning at his phone as he scrolled through the comments, a bowl of half-eaten cereal ignored on the kitchen table next to him.
It was a frown with layers.
Most immediate was the fact that he was not accustomed to frowning. Joshua was one of those individuals on whom Lady Luck had smiled since Day One: he was beautiful, charming and intelligent, and knew how to use all of these assets to the full.
Secondly, he wasn’t used to having to ask others for help — or (maybe more accurately) he wasn’t used to having to ask for help at all. Not only had he grown up in relative privilege, but ‘The Sun’ (aka Alexander Saxon aka ‘the Seeker’) had always softened his path, to the extent that the idea of somehow losing him had never even occurred to Josh. They had been friends since they were four years old, seeing each other almost daily throughout that time. Of course it hadn’t always been an easy friendship — Josh had argued plenty with Alex over the years, ongoing arguments that had at times simmered along for months on end, and yet it had never dented their fundamental connection. So this sudden, unexpected and wholly unexplained vanishing act truly did feel as if the sun itself had somehow just up and left, leaving Josh’s entire cosmos flailing and staggering in sudden and unexpected darkness.
Thirdly, and worst of all, no help was forthcoming.
Outside the window Cambridge was grey and wet, yet — as always — full of tourists undaunted by the weather. Summer was on the cusp of turning to autumn and to Josh (not a stranger to dramatics) it felt like the whole world was gloomy and overcast, a most uncomfortable reflection of his inner condition. A feeling exacerbated by the fact that inside the apartment packing boxes were populating every room, an unwelcome reminder how he and his other half had to leave their cosy nest.
Before the honeymoon they had been looking forward to their new life: himself snapped up by a prestigious architectural firm and Jamie getting a place at a music school to finally study something sie liked, rather than working in a bar. Now however, the idea of leaving Cambridge felt like yet another loss. Nevermind that they’d both grown up in London and were simply returning ‘home’ — if he was honest he wanted to simply flounce out on life and have someone else deal with the fallout. But he was supposedly all grown up now, and flouncing wasn’t an option anymore. (Or rather, it wasn’t an option when there was no alien BFF to accommodate his wishes.)
For a moment he allowed himself to wallow in memories — not the honeymoon itself, with its spectacular itinerary encompassing a cornucopia of the wonders of the universe — but the final night, the night that had changed their world, the night they had discovered an entirely different wonder.
(Deep breath, don’t think about it, don’t let the longing consume you, the awe and the wonderment and the light that shone straight into your soul until it felt like you could see the entire cosmos; planets and stars and galaxies dancing through time and yet all of it contained in one, impossible, person…)
He could cry at the loss and the forced separation, except it would do no good. He had to stop thinking about it. Somehow.
Forcing his attention back to Reddit he idly wondered if maybe doing a TikTok instead would have been better, since as a rule people were a sucker for a pretty face, he knew that much — and he had certainly never been above using his looks for his own advantage, having done his best to shamelessly flirt his way through life.
After all, what was the point of being beautiful if not to make use of it?
Turning his head he studied his reflection in the rain-streaked window. ‘Stop admiring yourself in every reflective surface!’ his mother scolded in his mind, but he dismissed her with well-practised ease. Golden skin, classical features, soft brown eyes, dark hair still tousled from sleep; added to which was the purple silk kimono, elegant and unmistakably feminine, and the overall effect was something like an echo of a foppish dandy from centuries past…
At this thought he pulled a face, caught between derision and amusement. As if his Jewish lil’ ass could ever be aristocratic. No, he was the secret bit on the side, the pretty boy toy, the bisexual twink; enticing enough to tempt even The Last of The Time Lords — the Bluest of Blue Blood in the universe — into bed, but apparently nothing more. Loved and abandoned, the most bewildering occurrence in his whole life, to the point of having to resort to asking Reddit for help.
Unfortunately, possibly due to being unable to draw on his natural advantages, he discovered that the comments were deeply disappointing. Not that he’d expected anything particularly helpful, but how were people so painfully close-minded? He knew his attitude to sex was more 51st Century than 21st (with many thanks to a certain Captain Jack), but the sheer number of replies being derogatory about what they referred to as his ‘open marriage’ were enough to make him want to bitchslap the whole world. You were a prude or a slut, no in-between apparently. And Reddit didn’t really give the option of nuance, not without writing something considerably longer and more in-depth… (The homo-, bi-, pan- and trans-phobic comments he simply ignored through long habit.)
He wasn’t even sure why he’d decided to throw the whole thing at Reddit, except the need to try to communicate with someone, anyone; to somehow reach out from the strange, unfamiliar place in which they found themselves. To see what a stranger might think, someone with no prejudices.
Well, clearly that concept was a complete fantasy.
Looking through his reflection to study the world outside the window he noted once again how grey the day was and half-wished he could be as excited as the thronging tourists. (He recalled being excited about Cambridge, once upon a time in a different life.)
But then all the days had been grey recently, irrespective of the weather. Josh knew that things had been different Before. He couldn’t quite articulate how, like how a dream slips away after waking, but also knew that ‘Before’ was not a place he wanted to return to, despite the current darkness. They’d been given a glimpse of life in the sun; all they needed was to get back.
“What are they saying?” Jamie asked, coming up behind him and draping hir arms around his shoulders, and Josh sighed, putting down the phone and Reddit with it.
“To sum up: they all think we’re toxic as hell — that we are a horrible couple who selfishly seduced the Seeker and ruined his relationship with Allison. About half think he should get back together with her, the other half think he’s also toxic and that we deserve each other. Generally the consensus is that Allison is better off without any of us.”
“Oh.”
He shrugged.
“I know, I know. That’s what I get for asking Reddit. ”
Jamie let hir chin rest on his shoulder, tilting hir head to try to look at him. As always sie was pale and exquisite, but with that cynical gleam in hir eyes that rarely left. Hir hair was still white-blonde, and for a moment Josh was taken back to their wedding day, the sheer vision sie had been. His very own human Star Poet, forever. Exquisite and singular. He picked up hir hand and kissed it; half-noticing the golden nail varnish and the soft silk of the green kimono sleeve against his cheek, all part of the ever-present awareness of having captured something precious and exotic, and he closed his eyes, feeling hir mental touch.
‘They seem very close-minded,’ sie observed coolly.
‘Well, I can’t explain about… all the other things,’ he replied, and sie did a mental snort.
‘Yeah, that didn’t go well.’
After the Seeker had ‘dropped them off’ the morning after that night, they had tried talking to Matt. After all Matt had known the Seeker as long as Josh had, understood what a Time Lord was better than anyone else they knew. (Except for Jack, but the Seeker had said ‘Don’t tell Jack!’ and so they couldn’t.) Matt had been curious about their ‘intergalactic honeymoon’, but attempting to explain what had happened had gone worse than they could ever have imagined — in the end Jamie had been forced to do hir first ever mind wipe.
Josh shuddered at the memory of that whole debacle.
Matt had for some strange reason thought that the Seeker had done something terrible. And Reddit had decided that somehow they had committed a crime.
It didn’t make sense. They just wanted to be happy… So why had the Seeker left, why wasn’t he answering any messages? Didn’t he want them?
Jamie clearly picked up on his thoughts, leaning hir head against Josh’s.
‘He’s our friend, he can’t just…’
(Dump us— leave us in the lurch— never speak to us again—)
“He,” Josh replied with a mixture of resentment and yearning, “can do whatever he wants.”
And there it was; the truth they understood to a degree they had never previously imagined.
Alex had been a friend — a rather magical friend, it was true — but then in one night their whole world had been turned upside down. Their friend had turned out to be a door that opened to reveal the whole of creation, the infinity of the cosmos (Everything, Everywhere, All At Once), a marvel upon marvels.
Except then the Seeker (no longer Alex, no, they now understood what he was seeking, and why) had slammed the door shut in their faces. He had said something about having to stop ‘using’ people, which was a lovely sentiment, except he hadn’t used them. If anything they had used him, wishing to have a taste of a wonder of the universe not in any guidebooks, and getting so much more than they had ever imagined.
And then losing it immediately afterwards…
Josh felt both hollow with longing for the sunlight they had found and lost, and also nameless frustration and resentment at how the Seeker had abandoned them…
A beat, then Jamie pulled back and surveyed the kitchen, before shaking hir head. Josh could sense the silent, resentful acquiescence — the way sie accepted defeat, the way sie had so many times before.
(‘Life’s a bitch, but I’m pretty used to that now.’)
“Right sad boi, there’s no way we can pack up ourselves before tomorrow,” sie remarked. “Not without half-killing ourselves. The books alone…”
Josh nodded. Some of the furniture was going to London, but most of the general ‘stuff’ — including most of Jamie’s extensive book collection — was going into storage, since the flat they were renting in London had nowhere near enough space. And Jamie categorically didn’t trust their renters to not somehow put tuna sandwiches in all the books.
“Guess I’ll ask for help,” he said, picking up the phone once more and sending a message to the extended friend group.
They’d come, he knew. They would be happy and enthusiastic and probably tease himself and Jamie about having too much fun in bed to get round to packing.
He could practically hear them already… The affectionate jibes, the excitement over his ‘dream-come-true’ job, questions about Jamie’s music studies (“Can’t believe you lived all these years in Cambridge and then start studying when you move back to London!”), fervent declarations that they would stay in touch…
And there was no way to explain how everything had changed, because their friends didn’t understand what they had experienced — how all their plans seemed superfluous now and they were simply waiting for the Seeker to turn up at their door and flood their lives with light once more.
. . . . . .
They had to wait a long time.
And when the day finally came it was nothing like they imagined.