This one is for my friend Krissey, who offered the prompt “Conviction“! I decided to use two characters I’ve written with before, and do a drabble about some of those last moments Yana and Jessie shared at the theater (for now!) I hope you enjoy!
“Are you sure?”
In this dusty, dim hall, Jessie shouldn’t be able to count each freckle on Yana’s face. But he can, because he memorized each constellation of them. He can pick them out as easily as if there were a spotlight on him and his best friend. But there’s no spotlight off the stage. There’s the bustle of the theater in its ever-moving space outside of time. The theater never sleeps, but Jessie doesn’t think he’ll mind.
Jessie bites his lip. Not because he’s not sure, but because there’s a knot pushing up to his throat. He thinks this is what it must feel like to choke, strangled, hanging by a noose. His eyes unfocus as he tries to breathe. Yana always tells him to remember to breathe. Sometimes in a whisper, more often in a wordless squeeze. It’s that pressure in his hand that gently forces some air back into him now.
“Are you sure, Jess?”
Only Yana calls him that. Right now, Yana’s words are a whisper Jessie almost wishes he would shout, so he could remember the full force of Yana’s voice while they are apart. But Yana never screams or shouts. It’s the small squeeze again that helps Jessie back from that wordless edge. Of course he’s sure. And Yana knows it.
“There’s no way I can go back.”
Jessie only whispers when he’s trying not to cry. More often, he’s yelling before he realizes he’s crying and by then Yana just puts a tight arm around his shoulder and absorbs his feelings like a sponge. Sometimes Jessie wonders how Yana can hold so much, when it feels like the slightest thing knocks Jessie himself over. But he’s pretty sure Yana has his own ways of letting the heavy things go. Some kind of special magic, so that when it’s all out, the world is a little better off than before.
“I know,” Yana nods.
“But…” Jessie’s hand tightens over Yana’s. “I guess you have to.”
It’s not goodbye, Jessie tells himself. It can never be goodbye.
Yana nods again. “For my mom.”
“I still wish you could stay.”
“I’ll come visit. I promise.”
A bus ride and a three mile walk. Knowing Yana, he would want to walk at least part of the way. Most of the way. Maybe they would meet on a street corner, when Mama Fawn or Atticus sent him out for errands. He didn’t really know what they would have him do. It could be anything, as long as he didn’t have to go back to the emptiness that had crushed him for months.
“Just–don’t tell. Don’t tell anyone where I am. I have to be away from all of it, I have to leave everything behind.”
Jessie doesn’t know how he’s made it this far without blubbering. But then he’s hiccupping and that noose snaps all the air from him and Yana is pressing Jessie’s face into his shoulder, hugging him tight. Jessie squeezes almost as hard as he can, reminding himself that it’s not goodbye. It can’t be. He refuses that.
“Not you,” Jessie whispers. “You’re always–I’ll never–“
“Me either.”
He feels the words more than hears them. The way they vibrate through Yana’s chest. Some of the kids at school teased Yana for how deep his voice was, which was why he usually whispered. Jessie’s voice, on the other hand, tended to get high and squeaky when he was upset.
“You’re always,” Yana said, pulling back a little. “Always and forever.”
“I promise,” Jessie said. “On a million stars. I promise.”
“One day, you’ll be a star for everyone to see.”
“I don’t care about that.”
“As long as you’re a star to me?”
Yana’s face breaks into that diamond bright grin. It flashes in the hall’s shadows and takes Jessie’s breath away, the way it always does. Yana is his spotlight, Jessie thinks. Or maybe the spotlight is wherever they’re together, and can shine their brightest. Jessie bottles up this feeling, imagining a little vial right beside his heart, in between his lungs. Whenever he needs to breathe, he’ll put his hand over his heart, and remember this feeling.
V. H. King's Ink 
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