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“Come on, it’s not that difficult.”
Joel, currently star-shaped over the bed, was not convinced.
“It is, Etho. I can’t do it.”
“Yes, you can.”
“No, Etho, I can’t. This is the end for me.”
“Maybe it would help if you actually, you know, looked at the Rubik’s cube you’re trying to solve.”
Joel groaned but slowly sat back up. His hair was sticking up everywhere.
“I don’t even know why you’re trying to teach me this,” he complained.
Etho looked at him incredulously. “You asked me to.”
“Yeah,” Joel admitted. “Back when I thought it would be easy. It’s not.”
“It is. You just have to follow the steps I taught you,” he insisted.
Cautiously, as though scared the tiny thing would turn into a grenade upon human contact, Joel picked the cube back up. It was scrambled to hell and back.
“It’s scrambled to hell and back,” Joel said miserably. His boyfriend sighed.
Their dorm was quiet as Joel held the entirely too colorful cube in his hands. He was sure there should only be six colors there. It most certainly did not feel like it.
Etho seemed to take pity on him then. “Do you want me to go over the steps again?”
Joel stared at the object in his hands intently, half scared and half defiant. He raised it to eye level and squinted.
“Alright.”
He was startled by Etho removing the cube from his hands. He held it with a casual sort of confidence, which was as infuriating as it was attractive. Joel hated it.
He let out a deep breath, crossed his legs and straightened his back. He was sure that would help.
“First you have to make the white cross at the bottom,” Etho explained with the patience of a man instructing a particularly capricious kid on how to use a spoon.
Joel leaned in, watching how Etho moved the sides of the cube to form the godforsaken white cross in just a few seconds, though still going slow so every movement was clear. Joel glared at the cube. It had refused to comply like that when he had tried it, and he had tried for a while.
“See? Easy enough.” Etho scrambled it again and held it out to him. Joel watched the white cross be destroyed so carelessly with grief in his heart.
Joel took the cube again. He was idly reminded of the first time he had sat behind the steering wheel of a car, the inexperience and the feeling that it could all go wrong so quickly. It felt pretty much the same.
“Remember that the colors should also match on the sides,” Etho told him. Joel ripped his eyes away from the soul-crushing cube that lay oh so innocently in his hands and gave Etho a dismayed look.
He had forgotten about that part. Fuck.
He decided to confront the offending object, under the false pretense of security that his size and consciousness provided against those of the cube.
The comfort and confidence were short-lived, naturally.
“I can’t do this,” he said.
“You haven’t even turned it once, Joel.”
“It doesn’t matter.”
Etho sighed. He seemed to do that a lot lately.
“Fine, I’ll help you a bit more,” he gave in, tone light-hearted. He reached forward and turned the cube in Joel’s hands. “First you need to find the white edges. Not the corners though, those come later,” he explained. He showed Joel the position of each of them.
“Edges located. Now what?”
“Now you need to put them all in the yellow face. That’s the one with the yellow center.”
Joel looked up at him and blinked a couple of times. “Yellow?”
“Yeah. We’re trying another method now. Easier. Now you don’t need to match the colors on the side.”
Mind fried, Joel decided he was not going to think about it. “Sure. Okay. That makes a ton of sense. Yeah.”
It was, admittedly, much easier. It made sense only after he managed to get them all in place and Etho showed him the magic of matching them one by one, turning the respective sides 180 degrees and completing the white cross properly for the first time.
Joel smiled at the cube victoriously. It was no match for him.
“Great!” Etho said, ruffling Joel’s already messy hair. Joel batted his hand away, but the high of his victory was too strong to be ruined by hair-ruffling, as evil as it was. “Now the second step.” Joel’s world crumpled.
“Alright,” he said, abject.
“You’re going to finish the white face now,” Etho explained. “For that, you will have to learn your first algorithm.” His enthusiastic tone contrasted hilariously with Joel’s misery-filled eyes.
“Why were we doing this, again?”
Etho ignored him. “It’s easy, just four moves. Right face up, upper face left, right face down, upper face right.” He demonstrated, slowly and carefully, and Joel thought he might actually remember it.
It was better then, once he knew he could tackle the steps. That’s not to say it was not painful, though, but at least it was possible.
“Here, try it with this corner piece,” Etho said.
Joel held the cube as Etho showed him. One breath in, one breath out.
Right face up. Pause. Upper face left. Pause. Right face down. Pause. Upper face right.
The corner was in. Joel blinked a couple of times. The corner was in. He grinned up at Etho, who would’ve clapped and cheered if he actually cared for Joel. He was displeased to see Etho just smile at him in return.
“That worked because the white side of the corner was on the right. The next one is on the left, so you’ll have to do the same but mirrored.”
Evil. Truly, truly evil.
Bravely, Joel held up the cube and did as he was told. Left face up. Pause. Upper face right. Longer pause. Left face down. Intense stare-down. Upper face left.
Joel straightened up. He wasn’t sure when he had slouched, but he straightened up then. It didn’t matter; the second corner was in as well.
“That’s good!” Etho exclaimed. Joel didn’t know if he was exaggerating. He didn’t care. “You’re almost done with the white face. Just two corners left.”
Joel put the third corner in. Easy peasy.
Then he looked at the last corner, the corner that would allow him to finally finish the first side of his first Rubik’s cube ever, and died a little bit on the inside.
The white part was not on the right nor on the left. It was up.
Desperately, he attempted the right hand algorithm one time, two times, and then could not believe his eyes when that left the white side on the right.
He knew how to deal with that one.
Slowly, carefully, Joel executed the algorithm again. His hands shook as he did so, but no mistakes were made. Life was merciful.
He immediately looked up to meet his boyfriend’s eyes like a child looking for validation. Etho offered him a smile and kissed his forehead.
Success.
“Next step,” Etho broke Joel out of his reverie, “is getting the edges in place. Look at the upper face, find an edge without yellow and make it match colors with its center piece.”
Joel did not intend to understand how it worked, he just needed to destroy the cube’s will to see him ruined, so he did as told.
“Now turn the upper face away from the face of the color on top,” Etho said.
Joel blinked. “What.”
Etho pursed his lips as he tried to come up with a better way to phrase it. Joel stared, fear flaring inside his chest at the thought that the cube might end up beating him.
Nope.
“Upper face where?” he asked, resolute. He would not allow himself to lose. Or, rather, he would not allow the cube to win.
Etho pointed at the edge piece Joel was working with, red and blue. The blue color in the front face matched, but the red on top didn’t. Therefore, Joel understood, the piece should go on the edge between the red and blue centers.
“The red is on the right,” Etho explained, “so you have to turn the top face to the left, away from the red face.”
Joel did as told. He was not inclined to ask for the reasoning behind it – behind any of this.
“Now the right side algorithm.” Joel squinted as he executed the algorithm he was told. “Turn the whole cube so you’re facing the red side. Left side algorithm.”
And then it all fell into place. The red and blue corner and edge pieces were both in place. Joel could die happy.
“Three more to go!”
Life was merciless.
Against all odds, though, Joel pulled through. He followed Etho’s meticulous instructions, briefly paused to admire his patience, and decided he could continue admiring it later, once he was done defeating the awful, awful cube.
Soon enough, he was done with that step. Meaning he, somehow, was done with the white face and the lower two rows of every other face except the yellow one.
“Now what?” Joel asked impatiently. His leg was bouncing up and down.
“Now you do a yellow cross on top. You have a horizontal yellow line now, so it shouldn’t be too hard,” he commented. “Just turn the front face clockwise, do the right side algorithm, and undo the front face turn.”
Joel stuck out his tongue as he did so. He didn’t care for dignity, not when he was this close to getting revenge on the cube for its disrespect.
He paused. “Etho, that looks like a yellow fish.”
“Irrelevant.” Etho smiled.
Etho analyzed the cube for just a second before continuing his instructions. Joel didn’t know if he loved or hated how natural it came to him when he had been struggling with it for at least two hours now.
“Okay so you got lucky here,” Etho said, unaware of Joel’s internal dilemma. Etho could barely hold back his excitement, which was admittedly endearing. “You got all the edges oriented correctly by sheer luck. That’s one step less, so make the most of it.”
Joel contained the very mature urge to blow a raspberry at the cruel weapon in his hands.
“Two steps to go, Joel!” Etho told him. Joel genuinely believed he deserved a kiss for his efforts at the very least. Or a hug, to relieve the trauma. “Next step is putting all the corners in the right spot. They don’t need to be oriented correctly, just in the right spot,” he said.
Joel looked at the cube. The corners did not match.
It was an ongoing war between him and it, you see.
“Find the one that matches without turning the upper face and hold the cube so that that one is at the top right corner,” Etho told him. He had leaned in, at some point. Joel had been too concentrated to notice. It was comforting. “And make the turns as I tell them to you. Okay?”
Joel nodded. He took a deep breath and prepared for battle.
“Upper side left, right side up, upper side right, left side up, upper side left, right side down, upper side left, left side down. This is a fun one. Back and forth,” Etho commented happily. As an afterthought, he added, “Like ping pong!”
It was a struggle, actually—a battle to the death. Joel had long since decided he’d fight tooth and nail, though, so he followed the instructions carefully.
The corners still didn’t match.
Joel dropped the cube and wailed. Well, he didn’t. He really really wanted to, though.
Patiently, calm and collected, Etho picked it back up from where it had fallen on the bed and held it back out. Joel took it.
“Do that algorithm once more and they’ll match,” he said. He dictated the moves again. Joel followed. Left, up, right, up, left, down, right, down; not too bad. And then it hit him. The corners were in place. They were rotated all wrong, but they were where Etho had told him to put them.
He got excited. He was so, so close. Etho smiled encouragingly.
“Now turn the cube upside down–” he waited until Joel did so– “and do the right side algorithm from earlier on one of the flipped pieces until the yellow side of the piece is down. Make sure to do it right, though, or it will all break.”
Crap.
Hands sweaty and trembling, Joel performed the algorithm until it got the yellow down. The whole cube got messed up.
He looked up at Etho in panic. This could not be it.
“You’re going well,” he reassured. Joel looked at the cube. It did, in fact, not look well. “Turn the lower face to the right until the next flipped piece and repeat.”
Joel closed his eyes, composed himself, and did as told. Adrenaline pumped through his veins.
One time. Two times. Three times. It just looked worse and worse each time.
“Keep going,” Etho told him, firm.
A fourth time and…
And the white and yellow faces were done. The rest were not lined up yet.
Slowly, fearfully, Joel turned the lower and upper faces until the colors all matched.
And that was it.
That was it.
“You did it!” Etho celebrated. He was smiling wide. Joel could not process it.
He had done it.
There was satisfaction coursing through his blood. Disbelief and pleasure creating a weird concoction that left him speechless.
He had won.
He had…
“Alright, so that was the beginner’s method!” Etho said happily. “Now onto the proper algorithms.”
Etho scrambled the cube, tearing apart all of Joel’s hard work and his heart with it too.
Joel wailed.