Beta || Iancorn (NaNoWriMo 2018)

Level Twenty-One

It took David a few days to heal enough to work. In those days, he and Ian went back to the conversations they'd had at the start; fun ones, which joking and sarcasm and insults and a hell of a lot of breaking rule number one. It was better that way. Simple. Enjoyable. Just being around Ian made David happy, which was almost scary. No one had ever had that effect on him before, and David had no idea how to deal with it. He tried to tell himself that it was just because he liked looking at Ian, but he knew that wasn't it.

So he tried not to think about it. Problem solved. Sure, it was solved in the same way you'd solve a rubix cube by smashing it with a hammer, but it was solved nonetheless.

On day seven, Ian started getting him to help out with the gardening. The work was hard, and David found himself having to take a shit ton of breaks to help heal his arm. Not that he was complaining. It gave him a chance to watch Ian, who, thank God or whatever was out there, worked without a shirt on.

"What was your life like?" Ian asked during one of David's many breaks. He didn't bother to look up from his work planting carrots as he said it, and there was a hint of breathlessness in his voice. "Before this?"

"Same as anyone's," David replied as he popped one of the blueberries Ian had let him eat into his mouth. "Had a shitty job to try and stop myself from drowning in student debt, kind of got along with my roommate, and played far too many video games."

"That's not anyone's," Ian smirk, earning him a blueberry to the face.

"No, you're right," David agreed with the same smirk. "Mr. My Dad's Rich effortlessly gets into Harvard despite being underqualified, and doesn't even know how to wipe his own ass. But most of us are just like me."

"Mine wasn't," Ian responded.

"Were you Mr. My Dad's Rich?"

"No," Ian sighed. "I was Mr. Scolarship."

"Scholarship?" David whistled. "Watch out, we have a genius on our hands!"

Ian shook his head with a grin. "I was a gifted child. You know, the ones who are signalled out as kids as a genius? Getting the scholarship was easy."

"So you are trying to say that you are a genius, then."

"No," Ian frowned. "Growing up like that ruined me. Everyone told me that I was smarter than everyone else my age, and I grew up with a false sense of superiority, thinking I was the best damn kid to grace my school's halls. I never developed any social skills, or made any friends."

"And that earned you a ticket here," David finished.

Ian nodded. "I would've rather been Mr. Shitty Job To Pay Loans, if that meant I could go back and change it. Get to enjoy my childhood."

"I imagine there's a lot of things we'd both change if we could go back," David sighed.

"Yeah," Ian stopped working for a few seconds to stare up at the sky. "There are."

In the moments of silence that followed, David finally saw his opportunity. He'd been here for a week, and he had learned a shit ton about Ian in that time. But he hadn't learned the main question he'd had from the start; why the fuck Ian was here. He could only hope that-

"David?" Ian asked suddenly. "Have you ever been in love?"

The question caught him off guard. "What?"

"You heard me."

David thought about it for a few seconds. Love. A month ago, he would've laughed at the word. "No."

"Then you're lucky," Ian went back to gardening. "You're very, very lucky."

David looked at him for a few seconds. And then, suddenly, something clicked in his subconscious, and he found his mouth moving before he even thought it through. "Ian? Why are you here?"

Ian froze. "What?"

"Why are you here?" David repeated. "You know, in this swamp house? There has to be a reason why you're not part of the group. Some choice you made. Something."