"Doubt thou the stars are fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love."

-William Shakespeare

"Christopher?"

The boy's eyelids seemed to move. Though perhaps that was just his imagination.

Alan took the white cloth on the bedside table and pressed it against the boy's forehead. With his free hand, he rubbed away a few blonde locks that were sticking to his head due to sweat. His fingers burned against Chris' skin, the fever had gotten worse. The boy seemed to be embroiled in a nightmare, his body making little jolts under the blanket.

He had been lying like this all afternoon, or was it already evening? He looked at the only window in the infirmary, there was not a trace of light outside. Alan didn't care what time it was, he would stay by Chris' side. His heart was still racing like crazy, his breath stopping every time the boy moved.

Chris did not often talk about his illness, it was only through his mother and regular absences from school that he knew about it. He had never imagined it was so serious.

"It's just the common cold," he had once told Alan, with his eternally wide smile.

The school nurse crept up beside him. It was only when he placed a bag of ice on Chris' forehead that Alan noticed his presence. The young man's pointy moustache crept up as he smiled at Alan's hands, which were entwined with his friend's clammy fingers.

Alan smiled weakly but did not withdraw his hands. He would not let go of Chris anymore. Earlier today, he had thought he could part ways with the boy, and with some effort, even forget him. That hypothesis had now been rejected.

The nurse stacked some medicines beside the bed and tapped him gently on his shoulder.

"Make sure he takes these when he wakes up," the man whispered. "Oh, and there's someone for you." His gaze wandered to the door along with Alan's.

Like a gift from the underworld, there stood the last person Alan wanted to see. The tea party of unpleasant events was complete.

The boy's ruddy hair poked out from behind the door, unsure if he was allowed to enter. Alan would make it clear to him that he was not.

In spite of Alan's glare, Blamey crept closer into the room. In the dim light, Alan could see his two hands clasped around a suitcase.

"Are you leaving?" he asked merrily after clearing his throat. His voice was still hoarse from screaming.

The boy shook his head, taking the question as a sign to approach them. Only when he was standing right next to the bed did he recognise the light brown suitcase with a red square pattern.

"I was told to collect Morcom's belongings, he is taking the train home tomorrow." The boy dared not look either Alan or Chris in the eyes. His gaze too was fixed on their intertwined fingers, as pale as the sheets.

"The nurse says he has a doctor in London, where he can get better care than here."

Alan squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting to say goodbye to Chris in any way. Not anymore.

Blamey hesitated for a moment, "I heard he suddenly collapsed after the match. And that it took them an hour to find him, in your arms. That must have been quite a shock."

Alan pinched his friend's hand a little harder, thinking back to what Blamey had said earlier. He waited for an inappropriate comment from the boy. An accusation on how he needed to keep his filthy hands away from the pure boy before he infected Chris with his unchastity.

None of those statements crossed his lips. Instead, he shifted his gaze from the sleeping boy to Alan.

The words rolled over Blamey's lips so fast Alan thought he had dreamed them. "You really love him a lot, I can see that now. I'm sorry for what I said yesterday, I've just never met anyone like you. You were right, loving someone is only human." The boy straightened his shoulders with new confidence, as if expecting applause for his lousy speech.

Alan's tear-stained eyes stared frantically into the other boy's anxious brown eyes. He tried to keep his face as straight as possible, not wanting to show the slight relief he felt.

Following old custom, Blamey held out his hand to motherly sweep the hair from his face. Alan avoided his hand. The boy had made it clear what he thought of him. For once, Alan was in a position to choose his friends. He was not choosing a backstabbing slacker, no matter how many times he would apologise.

Blamey seemed to realise this when Alan averted his gaze, unconvinced by his confession. After a brief nod, he quietly snuck back out of the room.

Alan's entire attention slid back to the sleeping face, which frowned convulsively at times. On one level, Blamey had been right, he loved him with his whole heart. Even if Chris would never feel the same for him, the warm feeling in his chest was enough to keep him going.

Again, his breath stopped as the blonde eyelashes moved up and down. This time it was definitely not his imagination. A smile appeared on Alan's face as two blue irises lit up his world.

"Christopher," the word escaped from his throat like a laugh.

The boy answered his smile. Chris' hand found a way to the sports shirt Alan was still wearing. His finger stroked over the spots of blood on the soiled white fabric. He had pressed Chris' face against him as blood ran down his mouth.

"You didn't faint?" the boy joked. "Even with all that blood."

Alan laughed and squeezed his eyes shut, relief flowing through his body like hot tea. "I could hardly faint, there's only one bed in the infirmary. Besides, one unconscious person is enough for today."

It had taken all his strength to stay conscious, someone had to make sure Chris was found.

As if none of those things had happened, Chris determinedly knocked off the covers.

Alan stood up to support the tottering boy. "You need to stay in bed."

The words did not seem to reach Chris, his gaze wandering to the medicines and his suitcase.

Finally, he shook his head and got that typical grin on his face, which didn't quite reach his eyes this time. "In your spare time you might solve differential equations, well I undergo such attacks as a hobby. It's daily business," Chris shrugged it off.

Those words did not reassure Alan in the slightest.

"Let me guess, my mum wants me to come back to London?" The boy opened the suitcase next to the bed, all the clothes neatly folded.

Alan rolled his eyes, Blamey was such a mother. He nodded slowly, restraining himself not to throw himself on his knees and beg him not to leave.

Chris turned his eyes towards the ceiling and sighed in frustration. "It's so boring there." Like a thief in the night, he snuck to the gothic window and peered out.

"The nurse insisted you take these pills." Alan pointed to the alarmingly high stack of medicines.

Chris waved his remark away with a careless gesture, his gaze still anchored to the window. "Those pills only make me sleepy. I have better plans for this evening than sleeping."

Alan looked blankly at his friend stepping to the suitcase and taking out a bag. He let out a cry as Chris grabbed him firmly and dragged him to the window.

"I still owe you a promise." He pried open the old, squeaky window. "The stars are shining extra bright tonight."

Alan's gaze shot to the door. Although the nurse seemed reasonable, he would prefer not to get caught. For the second time that week, they crept out the window together. This time, fortunately, only a fall of less than a yard awaited them.

In silence, the boys walked to the courtyard. Alan pressed his lips together and cast a sidelong glance at his friend, who was deciding where to sit in the wet grass. He wanted to believe he was fine, but the nonchalance with which he had brushed off his concern was worrying.

Finally, he decided that Chris knew his body better than he did and defeatedly lowered himself to the ground. The blonde boy's tongue slightly stuck out as he focused on assembling the telescope. The compact and sophisticated telescope was in stark contrast to Alan's homemade model. He had transformed a lamp with mirrors and magnifying glasses into a telescope, which could only observe a fraction of the stars.

With – hopefully not too obvious – fascination, Alan stared at the concentrated gaze of the other boy. His hair shone white in the moonlight, making his skin look even more sickly pale. So there they sat in the mud, two boys with bloodstained clothes, trapped between the walls of the school. Alan imagined how headmaster Boughey would look at them shaking his head and saying something petty about how stars are for poetic use, not scientific nonsense.

"Tuberculosis," Chris blurted out. He kept his eyes focused on the telescope lens and turned some knobs. "I can feel you staring."

Those words were like a slap in his face. Alan swallowed, he had not dared to ask what illness he had, though his curiosity had burned, he preferred to forget the whole incident.

"Isn't that–" Alan's shrill voice was cut off by a honeyed voice.

"A death sentence? It is. What a sip of bad milk can do to you."

For a single moment, Alan saw a crack in the boy's cheerful façade, the eternal stars in his eyes extinguished. Alan's heart ached.

Less than an instant later, Chris got a hold of himself and moved his eyes to the sky again. "Don't worry about me. Rupert has promised me he will find a cure, together we will work on it." Dreamily, he stared at the white dots on the black sky cloth.

That kind of hopeful optimism had tremendous power. Although he knew it was a defence mechanism, it gave Chris the particular charm that Alan admired so much.

"Thank you, by the way." The boy picked at a piece of paper that was supposed to represent a star chart. "For staying with me in the infirmary. I hate all the medical stuff, mostly the pitiful looks are bollocks, as if I'm already dead."

Alan sucked in his breath; those words seemed to hurt him more than Chris. "I couldn't leave without making sure you were okay," he sputtered. At that, he had no place left to go. The loud clock was now his roommate. Although, perhaps it would be bolder to just ignore Blamey and not give him the power to dictate his life.

Two blonde eyebrows crept together when Chris turned his face back to the telescope. "I said I don't need pity." You didn't have to be a genius to notice the sudden detachment in his tone.

It was not pity if you genuinely cared about a person's health, right? Maybe it was just selfishness, the fear of losing him this afternoon still had a grip on his chest. The greedy thought that the boy shouldn't abandon him filled his head. He wanted to say he didn't think Chris was weak. He was the strongest person he had ever met, the kindest and most brilliant. More than that, he was the only one who gave colour to his life. Alan swallowed all those words.

Feeling stepped on the toes and unsure of how to change the subject, Alan took the star map and studied it. Written on the back was a huge system of around eleven equations, neatly solved. Still with some errors, Alan noted.

After a few mere minutes, the sulking Chris looked away from his telescope and shifted his attention to the boy next to him. His mouth fell open when he saw that his notes had been daubed with hasty erasures and corrections. He was even more surprised when Alan declared with equal surprise that he had found the correct answer.

"What did I just calculate?" he asked with the nonchalance of a true mathematician.

Chris' eyes grew big as he eagerly snatched the piece of paper from his hands. "The position of a comet in the Delphinus constellation." He hastily began adjusting his telescope to the coordinates. Chris' mouth formed an 'o', in the dim moonlight he could just barely see how his irises grew large.

"This is beautiful," his friend uttered. Alan silently agreed with those words, and he wasn't talking about the stars. He could look at this scene forever, if only Chris hadn't pressed Alan's head against the telescope. A whole new splendour awaited him there.

The Greeks must have been drunk on bad wine when they named the constellations. The Delphinus constellation had the shape of a kite rather than that of a dolphin. Then he saw what Chris meant. On the tail of the malformed dolphin, was a long yellow beam of light, like a shooting star.

"We just discovered a comet, how astounding is that?" Chris sighed. The two boys forgot all their worries for a moment as they stretched out in the grass. Alan nodded exuberantly and took some notes for his star globe.

"Yet another reason to hate London," Chris said, clearly keeping a laundry list of reasons in his head. "The bustle of the city with its pollution makes the stars invisible. It reflects all too well how its inhabitants have no regard for the beauty of nature."

Alan couldn't agree more. Though he guessed people had no regard for the beauty of a pine cone, either in the city or the countryside.

A cool wind advanced, as suddenly as the rain shower that followed. The stargazing was over for today. To his surprise, the boy did not get up to seek shelter. He closed his eyes and let the drops roll down his face. The blood in their clothes was partially wiped away, as was the fearful memory it carried.

Alan wanted to do the same, but kept watching as a drop found its way from Chris' nose to his neck.

"About earlier," the boy said still with closed eyes, "about that whole soulmates thing."

Alan suddenly realised that he had not yet accounted for his hurtful words on the rugby pitch. Chris had to think he didn't want to be friends anymore.

Alan hesitated. "Actually, I do believe in those clingy things. I don't know what came over me." He averted his gaze from Chris, blades of grass tickling his nose. "To be honest, I've never had as good a friend as you, I think I just panicked."

When he turned his face back, Chris had opened his eyes. A brief flash of understanding seemed to pass through his face.

"Will you ever truly believe that I want to be your friend?" Chris laughed, though his eyes were serious.

"Not until you can provide me with mathematical proof," Alan joked.

"Then I will look for the definition of all the kinds of love and provide a proof for it."

"Then we can just exclaim "Quod erat demonstrandum" and forget about this mess of feelings."

Chris' laugh soon turned into another coughing fit, reminding Alan that Chris might not have much time left to do all that stuff.

Alan took hold of his friend's shoulders and pulled him closer to him as before.

When Chris removed his hand from his mouth, there was no blood on it.

Alan didn't even realise he had been holding his breath until it escaped from his lungs. Soon he tried to put on a smile, to cover up his earlier anxious look.

"Do you know my mother stares at me with equal concern," Chris started, as if he could read his mind, "then I always tell her, "As long as there are stars in the sky, I will be with you". Well the same goes for you".

Alan thought about his poem and smiled sadly. He was unsure whether a tear or a raindrop slid down his cheek.

Of all the stars in the sky, I only want to be with you.

Chris shivered noticeably from the fever and the cool outside air. Seeking warmth, he crept closer to a surprised Alan, who held his breath. He squeezed his eyes shut, hoping he could not feel his accelerated heartbeat. Despite his shallow breathing, Chris' soothing scent of vanilla penetrated his nose. He remained motionless, his hands folded on his stomach, the light weight of the blond head on his shoulder weighing heavily.

"However, there is one thing that would make London and my mother's nagging bearable," Chris interrupted his train of thought. With closed eyes and a sneaky grin – which already gave his intentions away – he continued, "Will you accompany me on the ride to London?"

Without thinking, Alan answered him.