we depend (I depend) on you • jayvik

Jayce - Year Seventeen

Steb comes to our home every day. He brings food, wildflowers in little glass vases, your medications, and fresh, chocolate-filled pastries from that little bakery you both used to love. He practically lives with us, despite having his own house in the city. He never says it outright, but I think he worries that if he leaves us alone for too long, that we'll both slip through the cracks – me, into the silence of an empty apartment, and you, into something worse.

You sleep most of the time and it feels like a life I've lived once before. And when you're awake, you're irritable, sharp-edged from exhaustion and the hazy weight of your medications. They do that to you.

I know you don't mean it when you snap, or when your words come out like barbs instead of something softer. It doesn't sting like it used to. I've learned to hear what you aren't saying, and to recognize the frustration behind your sharpness, and the exhaustion behind your sighs.

Besides, I'm not so easily chased away. It would take more than a few harsh words to make me leave you alone, and we both know you don't really want me to go.

Speaking of Steb's home, he asked if we would like to move in with him.

He brought it up over evening tea, and I could tell something was on his mind by the way he cradled the mug. His fingers had been flexing against the warm ceramic like he was preparing himself to speak for a while. It was as if he'd been rehearsing the conversation all day in his head and holding the words back on his fingertips. He used the tea between his palms to buy himself time, and he stared at the floor for a long while.

He tried to ease into it, he really did, but you knew what was coming the moment he set his mug down and waved his hand in your direction. Then he signed, carefully, that we needed to talk . You were curled up on the couch, a blanket over your lap, and a book open in your hands – something about pollution and hazardous runoff, something dense and clinical, the kind of thing that doesn't typically excite you. But when Steb began to speak, you closed it and set it aside so that you could give him your full attention, even though I could see, and I could feel that you wanted nothing to do with what he was about to say.

The doctors said you shouldn't be alone anymore. They say you need someone to help you. They say that you need someone to catch you when your legs give out, and someone to remind you to eat and rest before exhaustion hollows you out completely. They say that you need someone to make sure you don't waste away in your bed when you should be up and moving, strengthening your body and your lungs. They say that you need someone to talk to.

And I know you told them you already had someone to do all of these things. You said that you had me .

And I know what they said back.

They said that you need a person . A breathing, flesh and blood person .

How humiliating is that, Viktor? How cruel?

As if I'm not enough. As if I'm not real.

You didn't like it any more than I did. Steb told me you had some choice words for the doctors. Colorful ones. But no matter how much it stings, we both know the truth.

I am not a person. I exist in the space between mortality and machine, lingering in the quiet place where humanity fades into something else. And no matter how much I love you, no matter how much I want to be the one who takes care of you, I cannot.

I don't even have arms , Viktor. I do not have hands. 

I know it. You know it. But we're both too selfish in different ways to say it outright.

Steb didn't ask his question right away. He paused before he got up from the table and knelt in front of you, between your legs, and pressed your skinny hands between his own. His lips brushed the backs of your knuckles, and you stared at him with a look I couldn't quite decipher. Pain, maybe. Anger. Fear. It felt heavy and tangled. I think I was feeling the same.

When he spoke again, his voice was soft but certain, and he said:

I think it would be best if you and Jayce moved in with me.

You flinched, as if his words had hurt you, and I moved just an inch forward to be closer to your warmth. Your knee was right up against my frame.

Steb's house is further into the city, near the sea, close to a park where the trees are tall and the air doesn't taste like rust. And it's a house , not a cramped, one-room apartment.

One-story, he assured you. No stairs, no rooms you wouldn't be able to reach. There's enough space for all of us, he said, enough for you to have your own lab, enough for Jayce to still see you every day. We'll move everything over. I will pay for the cost of it all. You won't lose anything. Nothing will change.

But everything would change. And I think that scared you.

I watched your hands tremble in his as you stared at him, your breath coming too fast, and your mind began to spiral into the thousand possible ways this could all go wrong.

What if it doesn't work out?

You asked him that. He stopped for a moment, surprised by your question. Then you asked him some more.

What then? 

Where would we go? 

What would we do?

We've been here for so long, Viktor. Just the two of us. These four walls are all I've ever known, and I think, in some ways, they're all you've ever known too.

You told Steb you needed time to think. He nodded, smiled, and kissed your forehead sweetly. Then you asked him so softly, so carefully, if he could sleep at his own house that night. He left without question.

And then we talked it all over.

You were afraid. You admitted that first.

I wish you hadn't had to.

Second, you mentioned that you didn't want to go anywhere.

We talked until exhaustion caught up with you – which wasn't long – until your words slurred from your medicine and your eyes drooped mid-sentence. Then I nudged you awake and let you lean against me as I helped you into bed. You didn't fight me, even when I nearly ran over your toes. It took time, but we eventually made it there with a spilled glass of water on the carpet and a new bruise on your thigh.

I knew from the beginning that you had no intention of leaving this place. If you could, you would stay here forever. But, Viktor... we don't have that choice anymore.

The contract with the man downstairs is ending in a few months. By the end of the year, we'll have nowhere to stay. The bills are piling up from the months you spent in the hospital. Months of surgery and healing and rehabilitation and further uncertainty. The rent, the electricity, the debt we haven't even begun to pay back – they all sit on the coffee table in thick stacks, pressing down on us like dense sheets of steel.

I think you see them, but I also think you choose to pretend they do not exist.

Viktor, I didn't want to be the one to tell you that we're out of options. I didn't want to tell you that we have no choice but to go...

But by the time I finally found the courage to say it, you were already asleep. So I maneuvered myself as close to your bedside as possible, right up to where your hand rested atop my head, and I let you sleep.

∘ ∘ ∘

We will move in with him. Into his house in the city.

You decided on it last night.

We will let the money run out. We will use what is left to pay off some of the bills.

And after that... we will have no choice but to go.

∘ ∘ ∘

It will be okay, Viktor. You always find a way to make it okay. Please, be okay.

∘ ∘ ∘