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Jayce sat staring out at the serene, meandering water of a bright, shallow river. It almost appeared to glow in the red landscape, crystalline and shimmering from the rays of the sun through the morning fog. In one hand, he held a smooth, disc-shaped rock. The other rested on the wooden shaft of his crutch that lay flat in the riverside grass.
He tossed the stone. It didn't skip, only hit the water with a whimsical plop! and sank to the bottom.
He leaned forward to grab another stone when behind him, a familiar pair of footsteps whispered through the plant life. When he found his next rock, beside him, Viktor lowered and sat down. They greeted each other with a quick glance. Jayce threw his rock, and it skipped once.
Viktor placed a hand on his thigh. “How is your leg?” he asked.
Jayce searched again through the rocks. “Could be better,” he replied. “It hurts, but I wanted to come here.”
Viktor frowned and took his hand away, joining Jayce in the skipping stone pursuit. When he found one, he handed it to him. “We're almost out of tea. I'll get some for you the next time I go to the market.”
“Thanks.” The stone skipped twice this time.
Viktor watched the stone. His brows lifted in surprise when it bounced the second time. “How do you do that?”
“Have you never skipped stones before?”
Viktor shook his head.
Jayce quickly looked for another stone. He placed it in Viktor's hand. “You throw it like this.” Gently holding his hand, he guided him through the arc and flicked lightly at the end.
Viktor practiced the motion a couple times, and then threw it. It skipped once. He looked back at Jayce, who rewarded him with a smile. Then, both of them began sifting through the rocks, becoming more vigorous by the second as an air of competition arose between them.
Viktor found his rock first, not a second before Jayce did. But Jayce was quicker on the draw, launching it onto the river, where it skip-skip-skipped thrice until sinking. Viktor, who was about to throw his until Jayce had thoroughly outperformed whatever he'd be capable of doing, stopped his hand and threw Jayce an offended look.
Jayce motioned for him to go on, and when he did, Viktor's rock skip-skipped… and then sank.
Jayce nudged his shoulder. “Looks like I won, then, huh?”
“You have experience,” Viktor defended. “If I had the same experience you do, I would have won. It was unfair from the start.”
Jayce laughed, and returned to his stone skipping. For a few moments, they existed together in the grass staring out into the river made of crystals, the banks blanketed in vibrant red leaves. Jayce's stones danced along the water, skipping and jumping and leaping and spinning through the air.
Viktor interrupted their comfortable quiet. “Why did this take so long?”
Jayce, in the middle of an arc, paused. “What do you mean?” he asked, before throwing the stone. It sank without skipping.
“Us, I mean. If you had felt this way for so long, why did you never say anything?”
Jayce considered the question for a brief silence. “I don't know,” he said. “I don't know how long I've felt this way, or when it started. I guess it just happened—or, started happening. The routine in the lab we had just settled into my bones.”
Viktor ran his fingers along Jayce’s crutch. Pensively, he admitted, “I feel the same way.”
“You were always there. It never felt any different, just closer.”
They gazed at each other while Viktor mused over this.
“You've always been the same way, ever since that night we went through the math. You've always been… touchy.”
“Of course I would be, you were my friend.”
“Are you like that with your friends?”
Jayce knit his brows together. “No.” He sighed. “Just that… touching you, every time, it felt like a new discovery. You reacted differently, you leaned in more sometimes and balked others. It was a puzzle to solve, why you weren't always the same every time, inputting variables without the whole equation to figure you out.”
“But I never reciprocated.”
“You never told me no.”
“So you persisted.”
Jayce leaned and shifted his leg, wincing at the jolt of pain it shot up and down his body, to rest his head on Viktor's lap. In response, Viktor rested his hand on his shoulder.
“I always wanted you, to be around you, just for different reasons. At first, it was because you were the only one who believed in me. Eventually, it was just because you were you.” Jayce frowned and curled his body in. “Maybe if I had said something earlier, all of this could've been different.”
Viktor looked down. “No, no.” He tilted Jayce's head up with his hand, pressing his fingertips into his stubble. “I don't think it would've worked.”
“Why not?”
“In the undercity, love was a… finite resource. It takes energy, something people ran dry of by the end of the day. There was nothing left for me, so I learned to live without it. But, after I met you and your… endless warmth, I felt, whenever you weren't around, lost.” Viktor slipped his hand further under Jayce's head to hold him fully. “I never thought that I was worthy of all the affection you gave me. You showed me that I was.”
Jayce met him again with his smile. “I can't believe you ever thought you were unworthy of love.” Jayce held his wrist and melted into his palm. “You're the most worthy person I've ever met.”
“I tried to take as little as I could because I was afraid that if I used up your resources, you'd leave, and I'd be alone again.”
“I will never leave you, Viktor.”
Viktor lowered his head and pressed his forehead to Jayce’s. “You can't. In every possibility, I'm stuck with you. Only you.”
Jayce pressed a kiss onto his cheek. It burned on his lips for a moment, as though he'd kissed ignited coal. He echoed breathlessly, “Only you.”