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Uncle Karl’s house was a few streets and a ten-minute walk away from the Institute of Natural Philosophy. He’d moved a few months after their expedition to the desert, in part because he’d been doing more and more follow-up work at the Institute, and in part because their old house was too small for three people to live comfortably. Sandwiched between two other houses, this house didn’t seem much larger than the last one—any difference was hardly noticeable from the outside—but it was far more comfortable within.
Uncle Karl always walked two steps ahead of Jakob, and he was two steps ahead when he opened the door for the first time. The late evening sunlight bled gold into the sky. “I’ll go and get keys cut for the two of you tomorrow,” Uncle Karl said, propping the door open, “for now, though, why don’t you go and get settled in? Or you could start bringing some of the boxes in if you wanted.”
“I think we’ll bring some of the boxes in,” Rene said agreeably, already balancing one in his arms.
The room Jakob chose for himself was on the upper floor. He had a new bed and chest-of-drawers that he marvelled over as Uncle Karl assembled it, and a bookshelf that he hadn’t yet had the chance to fill. His window looked out over their empty garden; the last of the light spilled into the room through it.
“We could paint the walls if you wanted,” Rene said, pulling one corner of the sheet over the mattress. Jakob had already stretched his half into place—it threatened to snap out of his hands already. “We need to buy you curtains, too…”
“Just the curtains is okay,” Jakob said. One corner of the sheet popped up and out of his hands. He quickly reached out and tried to push it back into place, but it refused to stay down. “Ah, um… do you think we’ll stay here, this time?”
“I don’t think we’ll be leaving any time soon, if that’s what you mean.” Rene pulled the final corner of the sheet into place, and let out a relieved sigh when it stayed there. He wouldn’t meet Jakob’s eyes.
“...Okay.” Jakob said. “At least we’re closer to Alain and Ann, now. Do you think we can go and visit them soon?”
“We can—” Rene muffled a yawn in his hand, “we can go and see them every day, if that’s what you want.”
“Maybe tomorrow,” Jakob said thoughtfully.
Rene needed to make up his own bed, so Jakob pushed him out of the room with a smile. “It’s too late for dinner,” he said, suddenly aware of how tired he was, “but, ah… I’ll wake up early for breakfast.”
Jakob closed the door before Rene could say anything else and yawned into his palm. He pulled himself into the bed and lay on his back, staring up at the wooden ceiling. The mattress was just a little too firm. He was too tired to seek out any knots in the wood.
Jakob was asleep before he could do so much as reach for a blanket.
When Rene smiled, his eyes crinkled shut and became crescent moons, and a dimple would appear on his cheek. His eyes were half-shut now as he looped his arms around Jakob’s neck. “It’s okay, Jakob,” he murmured, pulling him closer until his chin was resting on his shoulder. His pulse thrummed in his ears. Rene hugged him, swaying from side to side and humming under his breath. Water lapped at their ankles. “You’re going to be just fine.”
He hadn’t heard that song since they left the Institute, when Basil had hugged him (for the last time, he hadn’t known it was the last time, he would have lingered more if he had—) and told him to be good for Karl, who’d be looking after him until the day that she came home. Jakob had nodded tentatively then, and he nodded and relaxed into Rene’s arms now, looking up at him.
“I’ll be here,” Rene promised, his breath warm on the top of Jakob’s head. Still rising, the water carried up jagged glass fragments, the lamplight distorted beneath. Even as the light dimmed, Jakob could still make out the outline of Rene’s face, his eyes warm and sure. Rene tilted his head back, his fingers moving delicately along his jaw. “I’ll be here, Jakob. I won’t leave. I’m glad you waited for me.”
“I don’t mind waiting,” Jakob said, the words a confession fleeing unbidden from his mouth. “I’ll wait for you for as long as I need to.”
Rene kissed him. His hands were gentle where they cupped Jakob’s jaw, and his mouth was gentle against Jakob’s. The water splashed at his waist. They stumbled back in a single shared motion until Rene was pressed against the broken, empty frame of a painting. When they had still lived at the Narzissenkreuz Institute, Jakob had painted a vase of withering flowers, their leaves shrivelling and turning brown at the edges, petals drooping over the vase’s edge. Director Lyris insisted on framing it, even when Jakob’s cheeks burned and he said she didn’t need to, he was just happy to paint something, really—
That painting was gone, now. The director was nowhere in sight.
From the moment they’d first met, Jakob clutching wide-eyed and wary at his sleeves, Rene had always been warm. Rene was warm against him now, too, even as the water reached his chin. “You’re going to be fine,” Rene mouthed against his lips, heedless of the rising tide.
The light winked out. Jakob’s grip on Rene’s shoulders tightened.
“You’re going to be just fine,” Rene repeated, like a prayer, and kissed him again. Jakob closed his eyes and kissed him back, his heart trapped in his throat, his mouth clumsy. The water swelled over his nose like a bruise. His hands, loose around Rene’s neck, trembled. Rene kissed him again, and kept kissing him, even as the water rose. Rene was not shaking. He wanted to open his eyes and look at Rene. All the breath left him. He opened his eyes to the sting of saltwater, Rene’s hair framing his face like a halo. Even as his vision swam, even as it was slowly overtaken by dark spots, Rene kissed him. He breathed out against Rene. He couldn’t keep his eyes open anymore. His body was suddenly distant, out of reach.
Something soft pressed against his forehead.
Jakob opened his eyes to Rene hovering above him, his mouth curving into a smile. He was half-obscured by Jakob’s fringe, stuck down to his forehead with sweat. The flickering candlelight made his freckles into copper, his eyes twin pieces of molten gold. “Go back to sleep, Jakob,” Rene said fondly, his fingers combing Jakob’s hair out of his eyes. He didn’t care that it was damp with sweat. “I’ll be here in the morning.”
He didn’t remember falling asleep. He’d been too tired to change, and he hadn’t even turned on the lamp before he’d curled up in bed. “Okay,” Jakob said sleepily. “You promise you’ll be here?”
“Of course.”
Rene’s thumb traced circles across his forehead for a brief moment, before he stood and turned off the lamp. “Goodnight, Ney,” Jakob murmured, his eyes already slipping shut.
If he said anything else, the words were too muffled to understand, and he’d forget them by morning, already lost to sleep as they were. But he thought, for a moment, that Rene turned back to look at him, highlighted by the pale silver curve of the moon slipping in through the window.
☾
Since the day they’d moved, the garden had lain almost unchanged. The only notable difference was the abundance of weeds shooting up through the soil, and the stone bench that Uncle Karl and Mr Guillotin had brought back one day. Made up of two detached legs carved like pillars and a flat stone panel that rested atop them, the bench was always cold and wobbled uneasily whenever anyone sat on it, and it had been placed at the far edge of their garden, where the last dregs of the sunlight caught and lingered in late afternoon. There were chips in the seat, each too small to be inconvenient, and tiny patches of moss crawling across the legs.
Jakob was sitting on that bench when the others arrived. That morning, as they were eating, Rene had frowned across at him. He’d reached across to press the back of one hand to his forehead, only for his frown to deepen. “You’re running a little warm,” he said, settling back into his seat, “and you’re too pale, too…” Though his constitution had improved by leaps and bounds in the time since their desert expedition, Rene still worried whenever Jakob grew ill, and he’d insist that he should rest at even the slightest sign of sickness.
“I’ll stay home today,” Jakob agreed.
Relief bled into Rene’s face. He finished his last mouthful of egg, then said, “Good. I’ll let the others know that you’re resting, then.”
Jakob took his time with his food, accompanied by the familiar sounds of Rene getting ready. Rene’s plate and cutlery dropped into the sink as he scooped egg onto cooling toast; Rene pulled his jacket on as Jakob set more bread to toast. As Jakob returned to the table, Rene called over his shoulder, “I’ll be back tonight!” The door clicked shut behind him.
Jakob finished his breakfast in silence, scraping away all the crumbs too small to pick up. He opened the pyroflower stamen left beside the sink and left it to heat up while he locked the door. When he came back, the stamen was lukewarm at best, but it was good enough for him to use; Jakob turned the tap on, scrubbing soap into the dishes as the water warmed in turn, then scrubbed them a second time until the last of the suds ran clearly off the plate in his hands.
He cast an idle glance out of the window as he placed the dishes into the drying rack, wincing at the odd clatter. So early in the day, it was still bright outside, sunlight spilling into the garden and hardly a cloud in the sky.
For lack of anything else to do, Jakob went upstairs and picked a book at random. His bookshelves were an eclectic mess, hardly sorted, either by genre or by author’s name; today’s choice was a book he only recognised because Alain had chosen it for him, a murder mystery whose front cover showed a white Mondstadtian bird, its feathers streaked with red. (Alain had picked it out at random from a densely-packed shelf of new releases and handed it over to him without a word, his face carefully impassive.) He tucked the book under his arms and went outside, and shivered as he sat down, the cold of the bench far stronger than the warmth of the spring air.
Jakob found himself smiling as he opened the book and began to read.
As he turned through the pages, the sun climbed steadily higher, and light filtered into the garden. The breeze carried with it a faint smell of flowers. He only paused for a moment, when Uncle Karl called, “aren’t you going to have lunch, Jakob?” through a cracked-open window, and only long enough to eat the sandwiches Uncle Karl had made for him in a few hurried bites. He returned to the bench where he lay on his back, the book clutched in his hands.
He’d grown so absorbed in the book that he hardly noticed the clouds rolling in and the sunlight beginning to dim, nor did he notice when the door creaked open, but he did notice when Mary-Ann pushed the door open and called, loud and cheerful, “Jakob! Hi!”
Jakob flinched and dropped the book on his face with a yelp.
“Sorry,” Mary-Ann said, wincing as Jakob pushed himself upright, the bench wobbling perilously underneath him. “Ney said you weren’t feeling well, but I thought maybe you might want something to do?”
The book had fallen onto the grass. Crouching down to pick it up, Jakob said, “he’s just worried, that’s all. What were you thinking of…?”
Mary-Ann brightened. She reached into a pocket of her coat and said imperiously, “your garden is boring, Jakob. We’re going to plant seeds.”
Jakob went to speak, but Mary-Ann interrupted him before he could even begin, rolling her eyes fondly. “Yes, I checked with Uncle Karl first. It’s fine.” She held out a collection of paper packets, each roughly labelled with the seeds it had. “Here. It’s your garden, so you should pick what we plant.”
When they had still lived at the Institute, Jakob hadn’t been the one to care for the flowers. The vice-director had always asked Ann to look out for them first, because she was the one who knew which flowers needed which amount of water, and how often they should be brought up into the light. She’d corral the younger children along behind her and coach them on how to take care of the sunflowers, making sure that each of them knew how much water would make their faces follow the sun. No matter how many times they’d told Jakob, he’d never been able to make the instructions stick.
He turned the seed packet over in his hand. The reverse side had a list of instructions: how often to water it, and how many hours it should spend in the sun.
“Daffodils,” Jakob decided. “Do you have daffodils?”
Mary-Ann shuffled through the seed packets in her palms and held one out to him, her smile like sunlight. At her behest, he picked out a few more, until they had an assortment of flowers and vegetables to be sown into the earth. She passed the packets over to him and darted inside, returning a minute later with two trowels and a pair of gardening gloves.
At a look from Jakob, she blushed and snapped, “I could only find one pair, okay?!” She could only feign being angry for so long before she was laughing, and Jakob laughed with her. He took one of the gloves.
They started with the weeds.
“I had a dream a few days ago,” Mary-Ann said quietly. She tore a fistful of weeds out of the earth, placing them to the side in a steadily-growing pile. “I don’t really remember it, but… we were back at the Institute. Al and Ney were playing together again, but the sword broke when Al picked it up, and I could hear the fountain, and… and it was so dark—”
And it was so dark, and the water was still rising, and he was terrified.
Jakob said nothing.
There was a tearing sound as Mary-Ann ripped more weeds out of the earth. “I keep waking up in the middle of the night. Maybe I’ve been dreaming about it again, and I just don’t remember it when I wake up.”
“It’s always too dark,” Jakob nodded. He picked up a seed packet and tore it open, tipping a few seeds into his palm. “I think I’ve almost burned through my lamp.”
He’d just finished burying that first lot of seeds when Mary-Ann spoke again, this time far more hesitant. She was tracing idle shapes in the dirt. “...That prophecy everyone keeps mentioning. You don’t think it’ll come true, do you?”
“It won’t,” Jakob said.
Because Rene had promised that it wouldn’t, and Rene had never broken a promise before.
Mary-Ann shook more seeds into the soil. “Right,” she said, but she didn’t seem convinced.
“Basil wasn’t there. The others won’t say it, but it’s been so long now, and they never want to bring her up, and—she’s not coming back, is she.”
It wasn’t a question.
Jakob stabbed his trowel into a stubborn clod of dirt and winced as the handle wobbled. “I know ,” he hissed, familiar guilt welling up inside him. “I know, Ann, I’m sorry.”
Ann leaned away from him. “I just wish… I mean… you should have said—”
Jakob let go of the trowel. He pressed the heels of his palms against his eyes and tried to breathe, hardly noticing the quiet, frustrated noise that pitched out of him. If Mary-Ann said anything further, he did not hear it. “Let’s just finish up here,” Jakob said eventually, pulling the trowel out of the soil. He cast a wary look up at the sky, where a bank of dark clouds encroached from the south. “I think it’s going to rain.”
“We’ll finish this first,” Mary-Ann agreed quietly, and turned back to the soil.
They weren’t anywhere near finished when the rain began to fall, at first light and intermittent. He hadn’t noticed the sun vanishing behind the clouds. It only grew heavier as the afternoon wore on. Mary-Ann shrieked when cold rain ran down the back of her neck, but she made no move to leave. She only crouched closer to the dirt and continued burying seeds. What started as thin sheets quickly became a steady downpour. Fat droplets of rain rolled down the window-panes.
Soaked and shivering, his hair plastered to his forehead, Jakob scraped soil over the last of the uncovered seeds and pressed them down into the now-damp earth.
Rene was waiting inside the doorway, a towel draped over one arm. He dropped it on Jakob’s head when he finally returned inside, and began to dry his hair. “You’re definitely going to get sick now,” Rene said, watching water drip off the ends of Jakob’s hair, “was whatever you were doing worth it?”
Jakob craned his head to look outside. Their trowels had been abandoned in the dirt; the pile of limp weeds remained in the middle of the garden. He took in each neat row of black earth, the seeds they’d carefully planted in each one, the basil plant Mary-Ann had left by the old stone bench, and smiled. “I think so.”
☾
This late in autumn, the sun had begun to set earlier and earlier. Few and far-between, the clouds were steeped in amber, and faint red brushstrokes had been painted across the horizon. It hadn’t rained in a while; it would be dark soon. Jakob chewed his lip and looked out of the window at the sun, sinking.
…Rene hadn’t come home. It was later than usual, and he wasn’t home.
Jakob didn’t bother writing a note before he left. He wouldn’t be travelling far. He only shrugged his coat on and locked the door behind him.
The Institute of Natural Philosophy was as busy as it ever was. Director Lasker had tried to restrict the researchers under his purview to regular working hours—he made sure Jakob spent at least one day at home each week—but they tended to get caught up in their work and stay for a few hours more. Only a few people stood in the entryway, each pulling on coats and casting wary glances up at the sky.
“Evening, Jakob,” one of them said, turning to look at him. “I thought you weren’t going to be here today. Does it look like it’s going to rain?”
“I just realised I left some papers behind,” Jakob said. He stepped to the side as one of the researchers moved out from under the awning, shielding her eyes behind her hand. “I wanted to do work at home, the director wouldn’t let me in anyway, but…”
“Right. Can’t write up your findings without your data.”
Jakob nodded. “I know the director wants me to relax, but I feel like I’ve had no results for so long, I just want to do something about it. Ah, it doesn’t look like it’s going to rain, by the way.”
“Right,” the researcher repeated. “Well… make sure you don’t stay out too late, alright? You know the director’ll have our heads if he finds out we let you go in on your day off.”
Jakob nodded again, but made no promises. He watched the researchers leave for a moment before he opened the door and went inside. The Institute of Natural Philosophy was far busier within, but none of these researchers tried to talk to Jakob as he strode along. He walked through the building until he reached the wide room that was being used in it.
To his surprise, Alain wasn’t in it, but his research assistant was. Carter didn’t usually stay this late. Sometimes it was because he had medical appointments that he needed to get to. Other times it was because he had chores that he needed to do at home. (Jakob had volunteered more than once to help out where he could, but each time Carter declined.) Most often, his hands would begin to shake at around four in the afternoon, and an unsteady waver would develop in both his voice and his gait, and whoever picked up on it first—whether it be Carter himself or whoever was in the room with him—would send him home to rest.
The lab didn’t look right without Alain in it, squinting down at his tables of results or trying to take apart the desert machines that he’d brought in, and it felt even stranger that Carter was the one who’d stayed behind.
Carter was frowning down at a notepad laid out on a desk, a few other books open around him. At this distance, he couldn’t make out the titles on the spines. He tensed for a moment when Jakob knocked on the door, only to relax when he turned and saw that it was Jakob standing in the doorway.
Jakob smiled sheepishly. “Hi, Carter. Is Rene in?”
Carter smiled back. His smile was always kind, like he was happy to help anyone around him, no matter how small the favour was. “He should be in his lab. I’ve been working all day, so I haven’t been looking around as much, but I don’t think I heard him leave.” He placed his pen down on the desk and stretched; from across the room, Jakob heard the cracking of his joints. “Are you taking him home? I should probably have left a while ago, too… ah, but no matter. Hopefully you’ll be able to drag him away from your lab!”
“I hope so too,” Jakob said. He made his way across the room and reached the doorway, where he paused for a moment. He looked back at Carter’s wan face. “Promise you’ll go home soon?”
“I will.”
Carter hadn’t promised that he’d leave—but Jakob trusted him. Carter wouldn’t lie. He turned back to the lab he and Rene shared and slipped inside silently, leaving the door ajar behind him.
It took a moment for his eyes to adjust. Their lab only had one skylight and all the lamps were turned off. Before it had been given to the two of them to use, it had only been opened rarely, and though they’d done their best to clear away the dust it still lingered. This late into the day, the whole room was almost wreathed in shadow, darkness pooling together in the corners and made thicker by the dust, save for a single dim light at the far end of the room, hovering above Rene’s desk. As his eyes adjusted, he cast a searching glance over the room. His desk hadn’t been touched at all: the empty glass, roughly-scribbled notes and loose odds and ends were all where he remembered leaving them. Mirrored across the room, the purple sigil anchored above Rene’s workstation provided just enough light for him to see the slumped outline of his shoulders, slowly rising and falling.
He’d fallen asleep.
A relieved breath left Jakob. He crossed the room as quietly as he could, sidestepping a component Alain had abandoned on their lab floor, and settled down at his own desk. He’d leave Rene to sleep for a little longer. He could always sort his desk in the meantime.
The rough notes went into three separate piles, loosely organised by research topic. Amidst the odds and ends, he found a small paint tin that he’d been looking for at the start of the week, and some charcoals he’d been meaning to practice with. The empty glass he left to the side.
He’d just moved on to sorting his pencils by colour and thickness when Rene stirred, the quiet cracking open like an egg under the clattering from the other side of the room. Jakob whirled around to see Rene pushing himself upright, his eyes wide, blinking dazedly. His hands were braced on the edge of the desk, his knuckles white.
“Jakob,” he said slowly. “When did you…?”
He watched Rene press a finger against his nose. It came away wet with blood.
Their lab’s first aid kit was all but empty, after an incident where Rene had stumbled upon a rifthound. Though it had none of its brethren with it, it had torn a large gash down his forearm that dripped blood and corrosive material in equal measures, and left a nick in his forehead. Jakob had worried over them as he patched him up, cleaning out the wounds with their antiseptic, the corrosion biting through the last of the gauze. He ran through to Alain’s lab again—Carter had already left, he noticed, and the bubble of relief that grew in his chest was popped by the needle of guilt just as quickly as it had arrived—and grabbed that first-aid kit as quickly as he could, rushing back to Rene’s side.
The nick on his forehead was bleeding thinly. “It’s fine, Jakob,” Rene said, keeping his voice light. He’d pressed a balled-up piece of paper to his nose. Jakob pulled a tissue out of the kit and quickly swapped it for the paper, tossing it towards the wastebasket. His hand came up to hold the tissue in place. “It’s just a nosebleed.”
“Your forehead’s bleeding too.”
“That’s an old wound,” Rene protested as Jakob swiped the blood off his forehead, but it fell flat. Of course Jakob knew that—Jakob had cleaned it out the first time. He didn’t complain again while Jakob cleaned the flaking blood off his cheeks and his chin.
Without the blood in the way, he could see the faintest outline of an old wound, the skin pulled ever so slightly taut at the edges of it. Now that he looked closer, he recognised it from a time when Rene had stumbled and sliced his cheek open on the sharp point of a rock. They’d been leaving Poisson, so early in the day that the sun had hardly risen, and the glare of the sunrise made everything obscure. Jakob, eyes already red-rimmed from crying, had almost burst into tears at the sight of all that deep red blood spilling across his cheek and almost down his chin, but Rene had cupped his head between his hands and said, “it’s fine, Jakob, I’m going to be just fine.”
“You’re sure?” Jakob had asked. He was still fixed on the blood running across Rene’s skin.
Rene, smiling back, said, “I hardly noticed it.”
“...Jakob?” Rene asked. His eyes were as still as the surface of the great lake.
Jakob shook the memory away, pouring antiseptic onto a cloth. He lifted it to the gash with one hand and cupped Rene’s cheek with the other. “You’ve always taken care of me,” he said quietly, swiping the cloth over the tiny wound on his forehead. It had already stopped bleeding. “So I want to take care of you too. Will you let me?”
“Okay,” Rene agreed, equally gentle—or perhaps it was hesitancy that he heard. “Okay, Jakob.”
Jakob worked slowly. Years of caution and hiding their adventures—first from Basil in the middle of the night, and then from Uncle Karl—had taught him how to take care of wounds. He cleared the grit and dirt out of it first, keeping each touch of the cloth to Rene’s forehead light. In the dim glow of the sigil, he could hardly make out that injury, let alone any other marks on his face. His fingers moved across Rene’s cheek slowly, pressing at his skin, feeling for anything else.
“I had a nightmare,” Rene said eventually. His eyes were fixed on the sigil. He refused to meet Jakob’s eyes.
Jakob made an inquisitive noise and ran his fingers over Rene’s cheekbone, steadily moving higher. He swept across his forehead next. When Rene didn’t say anything more, he moved to the other side of his face, keeping each touch like feathers.
There was a scrape next to his eye; Rene winced almost imperceptibly when Jakob touched it, a quiet hiss slipping out between his teeth. Wordlessly, he picked up the cloth again, and began to clean out that wound in turn. When he found no other injuries, Jakob swapped the cloth out for small strips of gauze. He held one in place against Rene’s forehead and carefully taped it down, then moved down to the smaller scrape.
“It won’t happen,” Rene murmured. His voice was so faint Jakob almost thought he’d made it up. “I won’t let it happen.”
Jakob secured the second bandage in place. He leaned down, checked to be sure that it wouldn’t slip with a press of his thumb, then pressed a tentative kiss underneath Rene’s eye. “All done.”
Rene stood and squeezed Jakob’s hand between his. For a moment Jakob thought he’d say something about the injury, but he only pursed his lips for a moment. “I think we should try a new research direction.”
“Okay,” Jakob said. He squeezed Rene’s hand back. “We can start tomorrow, if you want.”
“Tomorrow, then.”
No idle chatter accompanied them as they walked, first out of the Institute of Natural Philosophy, and then the ten minutes and some to their home. There was no space for it to fill. Jakob did not let go of Rene’s hand as they walked the ten-minute gap between the Institute and the home Uncle Karl had bought, and he did not let go of his hand as he fumbled with his key in the door. He did not let go as he followed Rene up the stairs, and he did not let go as they filed into his room.
“I’m glad you came home,” Jakob said. He stared down at their joined hands, only visible for the sliver of moonlight falling through the curtains. “It was too quiet.”
Rene swallowed. His chest rose and fell, rose and fell; Jakob counted the breaths. “I’ll always come back. Didn’t I promise you that? I wouldn’t just leave you behind.”
Unseen, the waning moon slipped behind a cloud. In the corner of the garden, left at the foot of that old bench with nobody to bring it closer to the sun, the basil plant’s leaves began to wither.
Jakob let out a shuddering breath. His eyes were fixed on a smear of green paint on the wall. “I know.”
Even in sleep, Jakob did not let go of Rene.