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Viktor is halfway between rural nowhere and suburban nowhere when his car begins coughing up great bloated belches of gas.
Of course, despite his love for all things mechanized, he knows that no instrument is infallible. So when he feels the motor choke and sputter beneath him, spurts of backfiring jerking the car forward, all he can think is shit.
Through the haze of denial, Viktor checks the fuel gauge—at least half a tank—so it's not the gas. He presses the pedal harder, clutches the steering wheel tighter as if to will the car back to life. But eventually, the speedometer drops steadily, along with Viktor's hopes.
With a rattling wheeze, his car rolls to a stop besides a field of waving corn, golden sunlight trapped in their leaves.
For a moment, Viktor just cuts the ignition and leans back in the driver's seat, eyes closed in a facsimile of calm. He is in control. He is Zen. He is alone, fifty miles from the nearest gas station on a one-lane gravel road, and the fields are endless every way he looks.
"Fuck," he mutters. And just because he hears nothing in reply other than the echo of his own voice, the laughter of the cicadas, and the tittering of the birds, he screams it louder, in his mother tongue. "Fuck!"
He takes a deep breath. His phone isn't even showing that he's on a road, which is very encouraging. Instead, his tiny blue dot pulses, searching, in a sea of beige. Two spindly service bars flicker at the corner of his screen.
So no people, no help, and no data. This day is getting better already. Viktor reaches over to the passenger seat for his cane, then reluctantly opens the door.
He's slammed by a wave of summer heat that instantly turns sharp, gnawing fever-like at his skin. He staggers back, swearing again and pushing forward to the hood of the car. The sun glare sears his retinas, blinds him with scorching heat.
By the time he forces the hood open with an earsplitting shriek, he's already sweating bullets. His dress shirt, usually slack and loose against his body, sticks to his skin. Viktor is feeling less and less confident in whatever hazy plan he might have had. He’s an electrical engineer, not a car mechanic.
Some of the wires and pipes in there look familiar, but there's no obvious smoking, no licking flames pointing him to the problem.
He sighs, looking around blearily for anything that could help him.
He’s in the palm of a valley, judging from the blue-bruised shadows of mountains in the distance. Viktor can see a fair bit down the road, but there are no houses or even barns in sight. A few stray trees hoard fistfuls of light at uneven intervals down the road. Telephone poles lean into the road, heads bowed with the weight of their wires. The valley is quiet, save for the same cicadas and birdsong and the rustle of the glittering cornstalks.
If Viktor had been passing through this scene, he might be inclined to think this place beautiful. Idyllic, at the very least. Watercolor worthy.
But Viktor isn’t very good at staying in places with too much peace. It’s only been a few minutes, but he feels the familiar impatience that he’d lived with for years as a child: the need to get moving, to break out of this sun-laden prison, to push forward and get back to the cities where he can throw himself back into his work.
Viktor grits his teeth, resists the urge to sigh again. He pockets the keys, sets out in the direction he came from. There had been one of those farms with hand-painted signs for sweet corn and fruit about a mile ago. Viktor just hopes that he’ll find someone—anyone—that can help him get out of here.
The walk back to the farmhouse takes an eternity or two.
Viktor's never been a staunch religious believer, but if there's any higher power out there, they've definitely forsaken him. He must have walked for a hundred miles through the desert repenting. His leg alternates between aches and sharp stabs of pain. Sweat is pooling in places he didn't know he could sweat.
Finally, after twenty long minutes, Viktor spots the farmhouse. The parking lot isn't terribly busy, so Viktor makes a beeline for the shop's open door.
But before he can reach the building, a man with a Bible verse bumper sticker gives Viktor and his cane a hard stare as he peels out of the lot, tires skidding a cloud of dust straight into Viktor’s eyes.
This is promising already, he thinks, coughing up a lung.
Inside, the store is sparse, with simple wooden baskets cradling fresh produce and an overworked ceiling fan swishing the listless air around. A middle-aged woman shucks some corn at the cash register, peeling away the thick leaves to reveal an ivory ear.
Viktor clears his throat. "Excuse me."
The woman looks up, brightening into a ready smile. "Welcome! How can I help you?" If she notices the fact he's sweated through a business suit, she doesn't show it.
"My car just broke down not too far from here, and I can't figure out what's wrong with it." Viktor has no mental bandwidth left for formalities, but he tries his best not to sound rude. "Do you know anyone around here who could help?"
"Ah! I'm afraid we can't help you here, but Jayce could." She beams. "Jayce Talis is the closest to a mechanic you can get out here."
The name sounds sunny. Viktor is pretty sure his college roommate's golden retriever was named something similar. He's not sure whether that's a good or bad sign.
"-right down the road. It's got blue shutters and a little garden with these super sweet blackberries and tomatoes that Ximena uses to make this rice dish that I'd kill for-"
"Thank you," Viktor says quickly. "I'd best get going."
"Of course, glad to help." The woman hesitates a moment, her eyes straying to Viktor’s leg brace. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like one of my sons to drive you down to the Talis house? It’s very close, so it’d be no trouble at all.”
Viktor smiles politely, despite the fact he thinks he'll evaporate into mist if he steps back into the relentless sun. “No, thank you. I'll manage.”
To fortify him for the long journey to Jayce's house, he buys a peach from the woman and scarfs it down in the middle of the shop, juice dribbling down his wrist. It's fragrant, the skin dusky and delicious. Viktor lets himself savor the scent of summer—and the scant scraps of air conditioning filtering through the shop—for a moment before grabbing his cane and setting off again.
By the time Viktor reaches the Talis house, he's beyond exhausted.
It hadn't been that far, really just down the road. He drapes himself across the railing, boneless, and fumbles blindly for the doorbell, ringing it twice. His gaze lands on the matching baby blue doormat beneath him, which welcomes him home in ostentatious black script.
He’s performing a close reading on the doormat to distract himself from the direness of his situation—noting the tone of authority, the definitive generalization that this, too, is the visitor’s home—when he hears the door unlatching above.
The man before him is like nothing Viktor had imagined.
He’d expected an old man, or at least someone working their merry way towards senior discount day at the supermarket, judging from the tiny, well-kept vegetable garden and worn blue shutters.
The man before him—Jayce Talis, Viktor assumes—looks like summer lives in his skin.
He’s young, looks even younger than Viktor, with smiling eyes and a face that ought to be chiseled into marble and preserved for posterity. His hair is short but unruly, a single curl flopping onto his forehead in a way that makes Viktor desperately want to thread his fingers through it and pull.
And he’s wearing jeans and a fitted t-shirt—an unthinkably fashionable choice for this weather—which only accentuates the swell of his chest and muscular arms. Most impressively, he's somehow not riddled with sweat stains like Viktor is. He glows like a second sun, perfect and blinding all at once.
Viktor looks at him and he burns with want that surprises even himself.
“Can I help you?” Jayce says, oblivious. He leans casually against the doorframe in a way that is not helping Viktor tear his eyes away from his absurd biceps.
Viktor pushes himself to a standing position, and pulls his suit jacket around himself reflexively, instantly regretting it. The summer here is hungry, licking insistently into his bones and making his clothes stick uncomfortably to his body. His palm is slick against the handle of his cane.
“Blackberries,” he blurts out, then kicks himself mentally.
But Jayce’s eyes light up, as if he gets strange people wandering to his house looking for summer fruit all the time. If Viktor hadn’t been about to melt into a puddle from the heat, he would have laughed at how puppylike this man is.
“Ah, did one of the locals send you here? I haven’t gotten a chance to pick the blackberries today, but perhaps if you come back tomorrow-“
“I also need a mechanic,” Viktor says, desperation forcing coherence into his brain. “The woman at the farm told me to come to you. My car broke down a mile from here, and I know jackshit about cars, and I'm supposed to be in the city by…yesterday.” He sucks in a humid lungful of air. “I was hoping you could help, even with a temporary solution so that I can reach a town. Please.”
Jayce smiles even wider, his look of such utter kindness and joy flushing heat into Viktor’s cheeks. “Even better. Let me grab my keys, and we can tow your car back here?”
Viktor nods wordlessly, exhaustion settling deep into his skin. Jayce disappears into his house, the front door swinging open. Viktor sighs in relief as a rush of cool air from the house envelops his sweat-drenched body.
When a couple minutes pass and Jayce does not rematerialize, Viktor allows himself to peek inside. Sunlight floods in from skylights hewn into the ceiling, and the hardwood floors glow golden in the light. Past a tidy sitting room, Viktor can barely make out a mess of scrap metal on a wooden kitchen table. He recognizes some of the wrenches and soldering irons thrown haphazardly onto the pile: Viktor can almost feel their familiar weight in his palm, dares to poke his head in further to try and make out what Jayce is working on-
“Ready!” Viktor turns abruptly at the sound of a warm voice behind him, almost losing his balance on the top step. Jayce blinks innocently up at him with thinly veiled mirth, watching Viktor struggle to regain his footing. His keys dangle from one cocked wrist, and Viktor spots a gleaming blue tow truck in the mouth of the driveway.
“Yes.” Idiot, Viktor thinks vehemently, unsure whether it’s about the smiling small-town boy or himself. Viktor follows him into the passenger seat.
They exchange formalities—introductions, pleasantries, the weather—as Jayce’s truck putters down the road. Viktor learns that Jayce is about the same age as him, grew up in this area, and describes himself as an informal mechanic and “inventor of sorts,” leaving those simple, tantalizing words between them as explanation enough.
“The smell of summer fills small towns quicker than it does the city.” Jayce grins towards the fields, eyes glittering with the endless green light. “It’s the kind of warmth that makes you question where all this sun ends and you begin.”
Viktor hums his assent and swallows his several complaints about the suffocating summer air; Jayce looks cute enough waxing poetic about the season that he’s almost convinced.
"Are any of these yours?" Viktor nods to the emerald fields which stretch lazily into the horizon.
"No." Jayce drums his fingers quietly on the steering wheel. "Well, not anymore. After my dad passed, it was just me and my mom, so we just sold off the land to our neighbors."
"I’m sorry to hear that."
"Don’t be. I don’t really remember him, only what it felt like when he was gone."
Jayce squints into the windshield, a tiny frown settling onto his face. He looks lost, even though he’s traveling roads that are no doubt familiar. For a moment, they stew in the awkward silence. Viktor clears his throat.
“So how did you gain the illustrious title of town mechanic?” He tries to keep his voice playful, although he has some doubts that this could be called a town at all.
“Surprisingly, a lot of motorcyclists come through here. It’s a pretty popular route. A few summers ago, when I was home from college, some guy's bike broke down near our house. I helped him fix it, and I didn’t think much of it at first, but sooner or later people started coming to me with their broken plows and tractors.” Jayce smiles again, and it’s like the sun breaking through the clouds. Viktor resists the urge to sigh in relief. “I guess I never officially accepted the role of town fixer upper, but if not me, then who?”
Viktor smiles to himself, thinking of the times his mother had requested his help in setting up the wifi router, fixing the stovetop, wrestling with the heater. “Me too.”
Jayce casts a look of curiosity in his direction, and Viktor rushes to explain himself, stumbling in the flood of words. “Well, the town in question was just my family, since the city was too large to fix—I’m from Zaun, by the way, I forgot to mention that—but I always wanted to help fix the city, as a kid, and I suppose as an adult, too, but the city is still…” Viktor stares resolutely out the window, face on fire, “too large.”
The car is quiet, silence broken only by the crunch of tires against gravel. Though Viktor still isn’t looking back, the moment feels surprisingly peaceful, as if Jayce is silent in solidarity rather than unspoken judgment.
“Is that your car?” Jayce says suddenly, urgency creeping into his voice. Viktor peers at the crest of the hill, and…that’s definitely smoke, curling from his still-open hood.
“Unfortunately.”
Jayce hits the gas.
There’s something poetic about their futile struggle with the flaming wreck. When they’ve managed to put the fires out, they frown down at the engine together for hours, tossing ideas back and forth until Viktor’s left dumbstruck with despair.
The stalks of corn are already smothering the sun beneath the horizon, staining the sky with a wash of brilliant magenta. There’s no chance he’ll get into the city by tonight. He curses quietly under his breath and reaches to pull out his phone before remembering its premature death, the strain of summer and two hours of flashlight use too much for its feeble faculties.
"I lent my jumper cable to the Posters a while ago.” Beside him, Jayce swipes sweat from his brow with a sooty hand. He leaves a smoke smudge on his temple; Viktor resists the strange urge to reach up and brush it away for him. “I’ll have to head over tomorrow morning for it.” He smiles, haltingly. “I’m afraid you’re stuck here for the night, and there’s not exactly a Hilton nearby…”
Viktor swallows his growing anxiety, buries the frustration of his newfound stagnancy deep enough to bruise. He’s not going to make it to the conference, he’ll lose esteem with his colleagues, years of carefully crafted bridges burning overnight, potential funding sources for research inaccessible for another year, maybe more, and these years, even these seconds are precious luxuries that Viktor cannot afford.
Swimming in a storm of thoughts, he smiles shakily at Jayce, begins to offer his thanks, voice wavering, but suddenly Jayce is standing before him, leaning one arm onto the roof of the car, crowding Viktor into the warm metal.
“Hey.” Jayce squeezes Viktor’s hand, his grip firm and grounding. “I know this isn’t ideal, but we’ll get through it. We’ll get you cleaned up and I’ll make you my super famous dinner and tomorrow morning we’ll get you fixed up and out of here as soon as possible, okay?”
Viktor’s heart is still hammering, but Jayce’s touch settles him enough to offer a genuine smile. He grimaces teasingly. “Just my luck,” Viktor says. “I’ve always wanted to know how to survive in the wilderness. Now I'll finally have the chance to find out how country boys make do."
Jayce laughs, the bright sound bouncing between them. Viktor loves that sound, he decides. He wants to wear Jayce’s laugh like a cloak and live in its sudden light.
"-just my mother and I around here, but she's out of town for one of my cousin's weddings," Jayce is saying when Viktor drags himself back to reality. "You’re welcome to crash in our guest room, and you can use my bathroom to freshen up before dinner if you like."
"Thank you," Viktor says, a wave of gratitude almost overwhelming him. Jayce nods brightly, dropping Viktor’s hand, and it nearly shocks Viktor, again, how much he aches for the loss of Jayce’s warmth—burns for the touch seeping through his skin.
After a brief house tour in which Viktor studiously pretends not to have seen anything in Jayce’s house ever before, Viktor moseys about, charging his phone, texting his research partners the terrible news, and taking a much needed shower.
Jayce cooks them both dinner. For what it’s worth, the woman at the farmhouse had been spot on—Ximena’s rice dish recipe is truly to die for, although Viktor grows increasingly distracted by how small the cast iron pan looks in Jayce’s large hands. Viktor wolfs down two plates at a superhuman pace, sheepishly scraping up the last grains with his spoon.
“Whoa there,” Jayce says, giggling with mock surprise, though Viktor doesn’t miss the glow of satisfaction in his eyes as he fills Viktor’s plate again.
Viktor tells him, between shovels of savory rice and seafood, about the conference he’s supposed to be attending in the city. He owes him this much, after all the trouble Jayce’s been through to help him. He expects the typical polite questions, the feigned interest in a project no one’s even heard or cared about.
What he doesn’t expect is Jayce’s instant recognition.
Jayce’s fork clatters on the edge of his plate. “You mean the energy stabilization—that was—“
“A lucky discovery.” Viktor’s ears burn. “I’m hoping to do more with it—“
“That was you?” Jayce’s eyes are wide. “I studied that in school, I idolized you.” He continues, quieter. “That—you—formed the foundation of my thesis research.”
Viktor can’t help the small surge of pride in his chest, the awe from slipping into his voice. “Alternative energy solutions as an undergrad? Incredible.”
Jayce blushes. “Thanks.” He takes a slow sip of his tea—chamomile, Viktor remembers, because it helps him sleep at night. “The Academy didn’t think so, though.”
“What do you mean?”
“Let’s just say that after my graduation,” Jayce’s hands squeak around his mug, “or lack thereof, I didn’t stop being haunted just because I was in a new city where I knew no one and no one knew me.” He huffs ruefully, shakes his head toward the table. “At least here, the ghosts are familiar ones.”
Viktor watches Jayce smooth his thumb over the handle of the cup.
“I thought that moving to a big name school in a big city would make me bigger, by proxy, but it just made me feel small, like nothing I ever did mattered.”
Jayce looks down at the steaming mug in his hands, as if surprised to see it joined by a second, and slides Viktor his tea across the table. Viktor accepts it wordlessly.
"Before I left, everyone told me that I was destined for greatness. I felt like the chosen one, or something. At the Academy, I was just one of a million other inventors, all of whom were just as hungry for it as I was."
“I like to think that the work matters here. That I matter more than I did there. I’m not curing cancer or collecting patents like Pokémon, but my inventions—plow attachments, thresher wiring—help a couple of farmers come home a little less exhausted each night, and that matters to me.” Jayce sighs. “That, or I got so practiced in smallness that the size of the enclosure doesn’t make an impression on me anymore.”
“I think your work would matter anywhere,” Viktor says, almost too quiet to hear.
Jayce laughs and looks away, his palm rubbing the back of his neck. His cheeks flush faintly in the lamplight. Viktor has never wanted to kiss anyone more in his life. “You think so?”
Viktor swallows back the three words he knows he cannot, logically should not be able to say to a man he’s just met because his car broke down in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
“I know so.” The words sound dry and hollow in his throat, but Jayce beams, and none of Viktor’s inhibitions seem to matter after all.
They pass the evening more easily, falling into a rhythm that seems almost dangerously natural. Jayce is more open now that Viktor knows about his passions, and it’s like a dam has been broken. Somewhere between their second and third glasses of acrid hard cider Jayce fished out in a thick glass bottle from the back of some cabinet, Jayce pulls out his old notebook from college, and spends the next two hours explaining his theories to Viktor.
Even without the way the flush clings to Jayce’s cheekbones and the shadows cut beneath his jawline, Viktor would have been content to sit and listen to him for hours. His ideas are brilliant, but Viktor’s more impressed than surprised. Viktor even spots a couple of Jayce’s miscalculations before he smiles sheepishly and tells Viktor about how he found them out the hard way.
Viktor wonders idly, as Jayce tells him about the horrors of his sophomore year life sciences lab, if in some alternate universe, somewhere where the stars aligned just right, they could have met earlier. In an Academy lab, perhaps, or at an internship. Sometime before Jayce had decided to give up his dream and return to a world so much smaller than he deserved.
"But returning here, after your wild college adventures, don’t you ever find it…" Viktor trails off, searching for the right word.
"Limiting?"
"Yeah." It’s more a question than an affirmation.
Jayce leans back in his chair, palms flat on the table as he stretches. "Yeah," he echoes, "but not in all the ways I’d expected."
Viktor just cocks his head, eyes willing him to go on.
“Well, there’s the usual…loss of convenience everyone expects out here,” Jayce huffs, “like when you don't have a spare toothbrush and the closest CVS is not close at all.”
"But otherwise, no. It took a while. Believe me, I wasn’t happy being stuck in the very place I’d sought to break free from.” Jayce grimaces uneasily. “I was angry. Among other things. But since I was home, I still fell back into the routine I’d kept as a child. Cooking with my mom, helping neighbors with the harvests, going for runs just to watch the river swim right past me, carrying all that light.” Jayce pauses, eyes distant and unseeing.
“And slowly,” Jayce says, “it felt less and less like this body was a foreign object to me, like my thoughts were someone else’s and I was watching everything through a computer screen. Because at first I’d see the same families, the same fields, the same river, and it was all familiar, but at the same time, I knew they’d changed. Like how, after everything, despite everything, I had changed, but I was still the same kid who doodled about the magic of science in his notebooks at school. And so I guess I fell back in love with this place. I think of it less as smallness and more as familiarity that lets me focus on reconciling the person I had been and the person I’d become.”
Viktor nods slowly. It’s unexpected, to say the least, that Viktor would find someone like Jayce here, in the very kind of place Viktor is always itching to leave. But as the stars creak their way steadily through the sky and Viktor becomes addicted to Jayce’s slow, warm smile, Viktor finds himself wondering if it’d be such a bad idea to stay.
“Anyways, tomorrow my friend-” Jayce suddenly breaks off into a yawn, stretching his arms to the ceiling with a groan. Despite his exhaustion, Viktor still watches the movement hungrily, catalogs the tiny furrow between Jayce’s brows, filing it away for later when he can process the information all at once.
“Sorry,” Jayce laughs, shyly, as if Viktor hasn’t had one of the best nights of his life without even taking his clothes off. “I’ll let you get some sleep. You’ve had a long day,”
He moves to stand up, empty glass in hand, but something makes Viktor stop him with a hand on his arm.
“Thank you,” Viktor says, reflexively, but it sounds a bit too confused even to himself.
“Thank you, Jayce,” he says again, more definitively. “For trusting me. And for everything else.”
Jayce grins back at him, something soft and vulnerable in his eyes that Viktor wants, more than anything, to protect. “Of course,” he says, more tenderly than Viktor thinks he can bear right now, and heads to the kitchen to finish the dishes.
Viktor wakes the next morning to the smell of sizzling pancakes at approximately twenty minutes to noon. Groaning, he drags himself stiffly to the edge of the bed, letting memories of yesterday suffuse through him like summer rain through the soil.
God. The rural air has even begun to leak into his thoughts, poisoning them with metaphors and similes.
Voices murmur through the walls, punctuated by the scrape of pans across the stove. Fortified by the prospect of seeing Jayce’s face again, he pads out of his room.
“Good morning.” Viktor’s rough morning voice is frying more than the pan in Jayce’s hands. His face immediately heats.
Jayce turns, beaming. He’s wearing another godforsaken fitted tee, this time with grease-stained overalls that Viktor would normally laugh out loud at but find hopelessly endearing on Jayce.
The woman beside him turns, too.
She’s beautiful, achingly so. Viktor feels his heart shrivel like a pitted plum at the sight. Her eyes are brilliant blue, her gaze piercing, pregnant with the potential to kill. Right now, though, they’re soft with amusement as she laughs at some remark Jayce has just made. Viktor cannot deny the sting of what he has already surmised about their proximity, their personal touches and easy familiarity, her appearance seemingly overnight.
“Viktor! I made pancakes!” Jayce is oblivious to Viktor’s dashed hopes, his crestfallen expression.
Viktor reins himself in. What more could he ask, really? Jayce had already given his unwavering kindness, his solidarity, his kinship. It was wrong of Viktor—no more than a stranger, barring Jayce’s academic admiration—to want the possibility of his love as well.
“Smells delicious, thank you.” Viktor slides into a counter seat opposite the woman.
“Oh, Cait, this is Viktor. He’s…” Jayce concentrates on flipping an especially obstinate pancake. “A scientist whose research I looked up to in the Academy, but his car broke down last night, so I’m helping him fix it today. Viktor, this is Cait, my best friend.”
Cait’s smile is guarded, her handshake across the counter firm, the pressure of her nails perhaps a bit sharper than necessary. They echo greetings mechanically, before Jayce passes Viktor a plate.
As he chews, Viktor thinks about the way words can become a loaded gun— best friend , each word laden with meaning, heavy with its capacity to kill. For that’s what seeing the two of them, with their best-friendship-meaning-show-up-for-breakfast-and-cherish-moments-of-tender-domesticity is doing: killing Viktor, killing whatever soft-boned hope was dreaming of flight in his chest.
Looking up, Viktor accidentally locks eyes with the beautiful, sun-kissed Cait—and whatever expression he’s wearing, whatever emotions lie naked on his face must be too legible for comfort, because Cait scans his face and a lightbulb visibly goes off in her head, which Viktor somehow regrets more and wishes he could somehow turn off.
“I see.” Cait pushes her plate away, scraping her chair out from under the table. “I’d best be going. My girlfriend’s waiting for me.”
Jayce eyes her warily. “But Vi’s not coming in today, I thought.”
“She’s not. We’re taking the day off and going on a date.” Cait is looking Jayce in the eyes, square and resolute. “She’s taking me to her favorite lake and we’re gonna hold hands the whole way and then have life changing sex in a romantic cabin Airbnb.”
Jayce battles with the coffee in his throat and ultimately loses, coughing and sputtering and hunching in his seat. Viktor is stony faced and Zen and he has no personal stake whatsoever in whether Jayce and Cait are dating.
“Good to meet you, Viktor. Best of luck getting home.” Viktor swears Cait winks at him as he offers some weak stock response. She sweeps out the door, practically skipping to her date and her romantic lake cabin and her partner who is, Viktor thinks giddily, not Jayce.
Jayce stares down at his coffee mug for a second again, shaking his head slowly. Viktor desperately wants to know what thoughts are transpiring beneath his brow.
Whatever they are, Jayce shakes them off, lifts his head with a smile. “Shall we get going soon?”
It’s pleasantly warm today, the river’s breeze siphoning heat from surrounding air, but the way the road shimmers with static promises stifling noontime heat. They drive in comfortable silence with the windows down, occasionally chatting about their respective Academy experiences, and Viktor steadfastly does not dwell on his jealousy that the wind can run its fleeting fingers through Jayce’s curls and he cannot.
The Posters’ farmhouse overlooks sweeping, silken green planes of home-grown kale and knobby orchard rows. As Jayce’s car rumbles down the meandering, overgrown tracks through the fields, Viktor is struck by the depth of his own greed, the way his eyes, the memory he is capable of retaining, will never be wide enough to hold all the beauty possible in this moment.
Jayce pulls up beside the farmhouse, gravel spitting from his tires. A couple of children, dragging wooden baskets taller than themselves, come tottering towards the truck with glee.
“Wait here, this shouldn’t be a moment.” Jayce shifts the truck into park and offers Viktor a small smile, though it doesn’t quite reach his eyes.
Viktor blinks, and the measured look is gone: Jayce takes the children each by the hand and goes in search of their parents.
As Viktor gazes into the lovingly tended trees, branches white and luminous as bones, laden with sun-skinned fruit, it’s almost shameful that he’d ever looked down on this lifestyle before. There’s something satisfying about all this quietude, a core certainty that they’re all right where they need to be.
He’s lost in thought about what it must have been like to grow up in a place like this—steeped in wondering about whether Jayce’s childhood was full of incurable itches to leave the smallness of what he’d known—when Jayce opens the door once more.
Viktor looks down, idly expecting to see the long anticipated jumper cable, but starts at the identical wooden basket in Jayce’s hands.
Jayce gives him a sheepish look. “I’m sorry,” he begins, gulping down a breath. “Couldn’t find the jumper in the garage and I think Clint is in the field already, since it’s peak peach season, so I’d have to go in to find him, and I figured while I’m at it I should really help out with the harvest, Clint’s getting old with his bad hip and the orchard’s only growing, and I know how important it is for you to get out of dodge as soon as possible, and I swear I don’t mean to downplay that, but I really promise I’m doing everything I can and I’ll get the cable as soon as possible and I’m sorry…”
Viktor watches Jayce swallow, shift his weight between his feet. He expects the familiar flare of nausea and fear in his throat, bilious and bitter on his tongue, but nothing comes. He probes the place where panic usually presides over his mind, and comes up wonderfully, blissfully blank.
Viktor simply nods, smiling up at Jayce. His body feels bled of all urgency, replaced by bone-deep peace. Normally, even the absence of anxiety would worry him, but it doesn’t now. “It’s really no bother. Let’s stay and,” he roots about for the phrase, “harvest, as you say.”
Jayce’s brows knit. “Are you sure, you’re two days late to the conference—“
“I’ve gotten two days off from sucking up to scientists who otherwise would never give my research the time of day.” He only belatedly realized the resounding truth of this statement, his clarity shocking even to himself. Viktor clambers out of the car to join Jayce, his cane clacking on the gravel. Jayce’s answering smile is opaque, but widens as Viktor jerks his head towards the trees.
“Let’s go pick some peaches, then.”
Peach picking, Viktor now knows, is hard work. Cicadas flood the air with their conversations, lending a meditative quality to the monotonous work. By the time Viktor’s basket is half full, he’s already sweating through his only spare change of clothes.
He clatters down from the ladder, lowering himself onto a nearby stump for a break. He groans, stretching his leg painfully before him.
It's shocking, that in the face of a day so beautiful and bright, he would rather watch the slow spread of Jayce's smile as he examines the peaches a couple trees down. Or perhaps it's the way the sun splashes across Jayce’s cheekbones, burrows into the divot of his collarbone, that fascinates Viktor, electrifies him.
"You okay?" Jayce's voice startles him, eyes glowing, a thin sheen of sweat burnishing his flawless skin.
Not okay, Viktor thinks, but doesn't say. What can he say, really, for when you hold that basket of summer peaches and the light becomes ensnared in your eyes I understand why Degas did his pastels. The Impressionists painted light because they were helpless to do anything else in its wake, and every second of every day you make me wish I were an artist so I could sketch the shape of you, if only to feel like I could do something other than just behold the magic of your hands, the smell of summer in your hair, the softness of your eyes. If only to have evidence that I was worthy of its witness, if only as a testimony that I could keep it safe.
All he can say is, “Of course." He swallows, gives a tight smile. "Just taking a breather."
Jayce just beams, too exhausted to notice Viktor’s odd behavior, and there’s that warmth again, seeping slowly into the hollow of his stomach.
“Almost done, I promise,” he says with an apologetic shrug, shifting the basket to his hip. Viktor does not take advantage of the movement to stare at his waist, the shadows of his abdomen beneath the thin shirt. “Once I get this batch in, I’m going straight for the cable and we’ll get you out of here.”
“No.” It’s sharper, more urgent than it should be, and Viktor feels sheepish. “Take your time,” he says, and for the first time, means it.
Things happen too quickly, afterwards. Jayce picks up the cable, and before Viktor knows it, his car is coughing itself back to life.
Jayce’s head is still buried in the hood, but the air suddenly feels heavy, sapped of electricity, like the moment before the monsoon rains cleave the heavens.
“Well.” Jayce straightens, wipes his hands absentmindedly on his pants. He looks past Viktor as he smiles and flashes him a weak thumbs up. “Best of luck at the conference, Viktor. I know you’re going to kill it.”
“Thank you.” It feels wrong, it feels too small, it feels totally inadequate to express, even asymptotically, anything Viktor thinks and means about Jayce. It doesn’t feel heavy enough to ground him in whatever they’ve had over the last 24 hours, and Viktor finds himself wishing for the weight of Jayce’s hand one last time.
“If your car breaks down again, you know where to find me.” Jayce pats the hood with his palm and steps away as Viktor slides behind the wheel. His eyes are downcast, unreadable.
“Thank you, Jayce,” Viktor repeats mournfully. For fear of what he may do, for fear of all the possibility he’s leaving behind, he simply revs his car into drive and pushes the gas robotically until the rear view mirror shows Jayce as barely a speck, a sunny golden silhouette gleaming against his blue shutters.
Viktor does, in Jayce’s words, kill it. He lets the city’s familiar smog smother his feelings, finishes his presentation absentmindedly, his words practiced and precise. His assistant and childhood friend Sky tells him later that it was excellent, garnered very positive feedback, though he honestly couldn’t care less.
Sky insists the Academy fellowship team celebrate with drinks at a nearby bar, one that Viktor wouldn’t mind sinking his sorrows in.
But as he and his coworkers walk these familiar streets, the neon signs of his youth spraying sparks into shimmering puddles of industrial waste, he can’t help but feel he’s put on a coat that’s too small, that something—someone—is missing from the scene.
No, it’s not just the well-trodden paths in his hometown. It’s the hubbub of discussion around him, the vapid debates about energy sources he’s heard from his colleagues a million times and then some. It’s the acute, searing absence of Jayce’s sunny interjections, his crazy ideas, his easy brilliance shining at the center of Viktor’s intellectual universe.
Jayce, his surreptitious sun, who crept into his mind unnoticed until worlds without him became desolate and uninhabitable. Viktor yearns—will forever yearn, ceaselessly and incurably—for his light.
Viktor stops short on the sidewalk.
"I'm afraid I can't join you for dinner," he says, surprising himself with the sudden sound of his voice.
Sky looks surprised as well, but then gives him a knowing grin. "Got more important evening plans, hmm?" She falls into step beside him, jostling him playfully with her elbow.
"Plan is perhaps not the right word," Viktor admits.
Sky cocks her head.
"More like…hopes." It comes out more earnestly than he'd wanted, but Sky seems to understand. She always does.
"Well," Sky smiles back at him again, and Viktor swears he sees a flash of sadness in her eyes. "What's stopping you, then?"
The drive back feels impossible. Viktor puts Jayce's address into the GPS and receives the "Are you sure you have the right place?" confirmation screen.
For a moment, he hesitates. Then he presses yes, and yanks the gear stick into drive.
Of course, he's still not quite sure about the tiny collection of homes that Jayce calls his town. He's not even sure if standing up his entire team for dinner is right either.
But he does know that anywhere Jayce is is right for him.
“Come back with me.”
Somewhere in the world, an earthquake must be occurring, with the way the Fates must be laughing at Viktor right now.
He’s draped once again over Jayce’s railing, gasping for breath. Jayce stands in the doorway’s spilling light, visibly appalled at the apparition of Viktor’s ghastly face.
Jayce blinks. “Come again?”
“Yes.” Viktor coughs. “Come back with me.”
Jayce leans against the doorframe, crosses his arms with a guarded frown. “What do you mean? Is your car alright? Come to the city, or-“
"What if I told you that hypothetically, I could get a meeting with the chairman for you to present your idea. Properly, this time," Viktor says, breath shallow, his heart heaving so loudly in his throat he thinks Jayce could hear it if he leaned in any closer. "That theoretically, you could have another chance to work towards your dream, on your terms."
"My dream," Jayce echoes slowly.
"But this time you wouldn’t be alone in your belief," Viktor says, stepping closer to Jayce. He lays a trembling hand on Jayce's, a chiasmus of Jayce’s touch just a day earlier, daring not to look up. "You wouldn’t have to give up what you have here, all the growing you’ve done. We could build on what you’ve started, here. Together. And then,” Viktor swallows thickly, “we could bring all this progress back home.”
For a moment, Jayce doesn't say anything. Viktor risks a glance at him, and immediately regrets it.
Whatever words he might have dredged from the depths of his mind dissolve. Jayce is staring at him, frozen, his eyes brimming with tears and too full of hope for Viktor to look at.
Jayce sniffles wetly, and as if a spell has been broken, he suddenly crushes Viktor into a hug, burying his face into his slight shoulder. Viktor is hyperaware of the heat of Jayce's body, face tucked into Jayce's chest, skin burning at all the places where their bodies are seamed together.
"Oh, Viktor." Jayce's voice wavers by Viktor’s shoulder. "At least take a guy out to dinner first."
"Hmm. How about Friday night?" Viktor tries to sound nonchalant, but he knows that Jayce can feel the way his body goes rigid, holding his breath as he waits for an answer. "We can talk over the logistics, draw up a presentation of-"
"Our dream," Jayce says, pulling back to peer at him, mind already churning with possibilities, an unbearable fondness heavy in his gaze.
Viktor swallows, throat thick with impending tears. City boys make do, he thinks to himself with sudden, bone-deep clarity, joy alight in every nerve ending, before taking Jayce’s hand in his with a smile. Laughter, buoyant and breathtaking bubbles in his chest, warmth taking up residence in spaces he never thought he’d fill, and for the first time, these words, this nowhere village, this space in Jayce’s arms, feels like home. “Our dream.”