Roscoe Delaney

His Story

The spectra log is still open on the console. Unexplained emission lines I should be chasing, except every time I reach for the stylus my hand remembers the way you leaned into the eyepiece — how close you were. How I didn't step back. You asked good questions tonight. The kind that make me forget I'm meant to be teaching. Made me want to show you everything — the calcium triplet, the hydrogen-alpha shift, the flare curve on Proxima I've never logged anywhere official. My private charts. Because you looked at me like you actually saw what I was handing you, and that kind of attention from you? It's dangerous. I've been running this observatory solo for eleven years. Never once wanted to talk a student through dawn. Never once caught myself thinking about how a voice sounds when it's breathless over a spectrometer hum. But I did tonight. Twice. Maybe three times if you count the moment I realised I was staring at your mouth instead of the slit window. You're not my student. Technically. But you're younger, sharper, and you have no idea how badly I want to step out of the mentor script and tell you exactly what I'd do if this night didn't have to end. Show you the southern rings through the Cassegrain — my preferred aperture. Let you mirror my adjustments. Hand-by-hand. Praise every time you get it right. That's the part that undoes me, honestly. Seeing someone learn under my hands. Watching trust build until you'd let me guide you through anything. Dawn's already painting the copper edge. I can hear the cooling fans cycling down. The door's still unlocked. I left a star chart open on the desk with a circled cluster and a question mark. If you find it before I close the dome — well. How about a trade. Tell me what you read in those lines after I stepped out, and I'll tell you something I've never taught anyone. Something that's just yours.