Work Text:
Jayce used to think love was something you earned.
Like grades. Like prestige. Like a place in someone’s life that had to be fought for, proved over and over, tested until it broke.
Even as a child, he’d assumed his mother stayed because he was good after his father died. He worked hard. Didn’t cry too much. Got his math right on the first try. Cleaned up when she was too tired to ask.
He never asked what it cost her to raise a boy who tried to be perfect.
He never asked if she loved him when he wasn’t.
It was in college that he started seeing the cracks.
The insomnia. The migraines. The panicked need to fix everyone else’s problems to prove his worth. The loud charm, the driven speeches, the desperation clinging to the applause that followed.
He got good at explaining it all away. “Just stressed.” “Just tired.” “Just have to push a little harder.”
But there were nights…long, brutal nights in a too-quiet dorm room, when he caught himself calculating how much of him was real, and how much was performance. How much he gave and how little he let himself keep.
After graduation and launching his career, he bought his mother a house. A quiet one. With light wood floors and no ghosts of husbands died. She cried when she saw the kitchen.
He cried later, alone in the garage.
Because even that, especially that, felt like proof. Like penance.
If he gave enough, maybe he’d earn a right to rest.
He was thirty-four when he finally found it.
One of her old notebooks. Stuffed into a worn leather bag she’d left in the guest bedroom. Not an engineering manual or a smelting manual. Just a lined book with her name in swirling, looping handwriting.
On the first page, she’d written:
“Things I want you to know if I don’t get to say them.”
And below that:
- You are not what you produce.
- You are not how well you perform.
- You are loved even when you’re tired.
- You are allowed to rest.
- You are mine and enough and always have been.
He sat with it for a long time.
The words didn’t hit him like a lightning strike.
They sank, slow. Like sunlight through water. Like warmth into frozen skin.
He started small.
No more all-nighters for projects that didn’t matter. No more holding back tears just because he didn’t want to burden someone. No more apologizing for softness.
He signed up for therapy. He stopped explaining why.
He bought a cheap keyboard and taught himself to play lullabies she used to hum when she thought he was asleep.
He called her…not just to check in, but to ask, ‘What did you eat today?’, ‘What made you smile?’
He started journaling.
And slowly, on the margins of his most difficult days, he added a little formula:
Jayce Talis = Son + Creator + Survivor + Worthy (Even When Still)
The secret to love was never in a breakthrough or a lab or a headline.
It was in watching his mother drink lukewarm tea at midnight while writing out budget numbers for the family business and still looking up to say, “Tell me what’s on your mind, baby.”
It was in her showing up every day, even when she was tired, even when it was unfair, and never once telling him to earn a mother’s love.
He used to think love was something you unlocked through excellence.
Now?
Now he knows it’s something you keep alive with care.
Even for yourself.
Especially for yourself.