2065 - The Academy

Victor may have been warned, but he didn’t listen.

David, meanwhile, took General Howard’s advice to heart and resolved to do better. His grades improved—he became a top performer again—and outside the classroom, his prospects were even brighter. He’d signed up for the track team at the beginning of the year and found that it suited him surprisingly well—he medaled at his first meet, and won a trophy which now sat in the athletic center’s display case. His second cadet review of the year was far more positive, and the faculty panel overwhelmingly agreed that they were excited to see what lay in store.

He shared these accomplishments with Victor, but every success was met by anger, for some reason. Victor had become increasingly sullen and withdrawn as the year went on, and David couldn’t help but notice that he’d grown exceedingly careless, too.

He wasn’t careful with his emotions. David found himself treading carefully in order to avoid angering or upsetting him, but it rarely worked anymore, and even the most minor of provocations were met by criticism and contempt. Victor had a tendency to slip into long periods of brooding, followed by explosive outbursts in which he’d bemoan the fact that his needs hadn’t been anticipated beforehand. These desires always seemed subject to change, though, with very little notice.

David’s tolerance for these things was waning quickly, and he expressed these concerns more than once. Victor always promised to do better, and he would for a short time, but he invariably seemed to slip back into his old habits.

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Most importantly, though, Victor hadn’t bothered hiding what was going on between them. It was an open secret now, and David warned him multiple times that they were on the verge of being caught, even going so far as to point out that such relationships were forbidden by Academy rules. Victor always brushed these concerns aside, though. It was more of an unspoken rule, he said—a holdover from earlier times which was rarely enforced.

David nodded in reply, but he didn’t quite believe it. As it stood, though, he was glad no one in the school’s administration seemed to care, because Victor certainly didn’t. He was growing bolder by the day, and although he avoided disclosing their activities outright, he’d drop hints, or give a subtle nod to it in conversation, or let his touch linger a bit too long when he thought no one was looking. Then, he did it even when they were. Once, during an assembly, he reached over and rested his hand on David’s knee. David hastily pried it away, but a few minutes later, he did it again.

At first, David thought it might be accidental—just a careless slip every now and then—but now he knew better. Victor found something thrilling in the prospect of nearly being caught.

David felt quite the opposite, but he wasn’t entirely ready to give up. Not just yet. He may not have loved every second they spent together, but there was something exhilarating to it, even still. Victor’s storms were always followed by the deepest calm, and the lowest of lows preceded the highest of highs. David was always chasing those moments—the ones that made it all worth it—and even though he rarely found them anymore, when he did, it was heaven on earth.

An even darker notion had taken residence in his mind, though—one that gave him pause—because that look in Victor’s eyes had changed. Every time Victor stared at him now, David could tell he saw something he owned. He began to wonder if Victor secretly wanted him to fail, because with each success, that hold slipped just a little bit.

This bothered him, and he planned to address it, but he never got the chance.