The first sip changed nothing.
Jacob lowered the bottle, ran his tongue over his lips, and remained seated in front of the fireplace — large, composed, alert. His red-and-white jacket caught the firelight brightly across his shoulders, the golden letter "U" flashing with every movement of the flames. Even here, in someone else's house in the middle of the forest, he somehow managed to look as though the space belonged to him.
Simon sat across from him.
He had not opened his own bottle. He simply held it in both hands, feeling the cold through the glass, and watched Jacob take a second sip.
Not greedily. Not in a hurry.
Ordinarily.
That was the most frightening part: . There was no thunder, the windows did not burst, the house did not tremble to warn them that a boundary had been crossed. Jacob drank his beer. A log settled in the fireplace. Outside, rain tapped steadily against the glass. And inside Simon, one life had already ended and another was beginning — the one in which the man across from him would no longer be able to stand up and leave when the conversation became uncomfortable.
Simon had imagined this moment dozens of times.
In his fantasies, it had always felt ceremonial. He thought he would feel power — hot, intoxicating, like what he had seen in Jacob's eyes every time Jacob cornered him.
But now it was quiet inside.
Not empty — quiet. Like a house after the door has closed behind the last guest.
— Well? — Jacob tilted the bottle. — We drove God knows how far so you could sit there and stare at me?
— I was waiting for you to start.
— I already did. — He took another drink. — Your turn.
Simon lowered his gaze to the untouched bottle.
— I don't have to drink.
— Of course not. — Jacob smirked. — You're the sober one here.
The line sounded like his usual mockery, but the old ease was missing from his voice. Jacob was still listening — to the house, to the rain, to his own premonition. Simon could see it in the tension of the free hand resting on his knee, in the way his eyes kept returning to the wooden chair by the fireplace, the duffel bag near the kitchen island, the door.
He was noting the exits.
Measuring the distances.
Even now, he remained what he was on the field: a man certain that any position could be overturned by force, as long as he recognized the threat in time.
Simon almost felt sorry for him.
Almost.
Jacob did not like being watched in silence.
At the university, other people's eyes always gave him something: admiration, envy, fear, the desire to please. People looked at him and explained why at the same time. Simon explained nothing. His eyes were dark, calm, impossibly attentive — as if Jacob had already said everything, though he had barely opened his mouth.
It was irritating.
And more compelling than it should have been.
Jacob leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
— All right. Enough with the riddles. You pulled me out of the director's office. Lied to his face. Called us friends. Then dragged me out here. Why?
— I told you. To talk.
— About what?
— About why you chose me.
Jacob frowned.
— Chose you for what?
— You know exactly what.
— No, baby. — He slowly shook his head. — I want to hear exactly how it sounds inside your head.
The old word settled between them.
Baby.
It used to cut into Simon like a thin blade: humiliating him, diminishing him, putting him in his place. Even now, something beneath his ribs still flinched — the body recognizing its master's voice before the mind could remember that the master would soon cease to be one.
Simon tightened his grip on the bottle.
— For three years, you found me in every hallway. You came to places where you had no classes. Waited after lectures. Locked doors. Left Craig outside whenever you wanted to be alone with me. — He spoke without accusation, almost without emotion. — You could have chosen anyone. But you always came back to me.
Jacob leaned back against the sofa.
— Because you let me.
— That isn't an answer.
— What answer do you want?
— An honest one.
The fire cracked louder. For a moment, a fan of sparks rose between them, and Jacob's face hardened.
— You think saving me from the director means you get to interrogate me now?
— No. — Simon looked directly into his eyes. — I think you owe me now.
The words struck exactly where they were meant to.
Jacob froze, then gave a short laugh with no humor in it.
— Careful.
— Or what?
The question was quiet.
Not a challenge. Worse.
A statement of fact that the old threat no longer worked.
Jacob slowly placed the bottle on the edge of the table. His body leaned forward, his shoulders blocking the fire. For a moment, everything became as it had always been: the larger figure looming over the thinner one, the predator reclaiming the proper angle, the distance between them shrinking.
Simon did not retreat.
And Jacob stopped.
He could have grabbed him. With one hand. Slammed him back against the chair, torn this new coldness out of him, forced him to lower his eyes again. But something held him back — not fear. More like a strange desire to keep watching. To find out how far the mouse would go if, for once, no teeth were shown.
— You've changed, — he said.
— No. You just never saw me.
The answer made him look away.
The phone in his pocket vibrated briefly. Jacob took it out. Priscilla's name and several messages appeared on the screen.
Where are you?
Why aren't you answering?
Jacob read them without opening the thread and placed the phone face down on the table.
Simon followed the movement.
One small action. Meaning nothing. But the broken part of his mind immediately : Jacob had seen who was writing and still stayed here. With him. In the house that swallowed sound.
— Don't look at me like that, — Jacob said.
— Like what?
— Like I just did something important.
Simon smiled almost imperceptibly.
— Did you?
Jacob picked up the bottle again and drank. Longer this time.
Time began moving differently.
Simon could almost hear it physically — not in the ticking of a clock, because there was none in the living room, but in the small changes in the man across from him. First, Jacob began blinking a little more slowly. Then he rubbed the back of his neck twice, as if the collar of his jacket had suddenly grown too tight. His posture still performed relaxation, but the muscles in his neck no longer held it naturally.
Simon knew: it had started.
Relief came with fear.
Not for himself.
For Jacob.
He watched every breath Jacob took, the color of his skin, the movement of his pupils. He had prepared too long not to understand the most important thing: the man had to fall asleep, not disappear. Simon needed stillness, not death. The thought that he might have miscalculated pierced his calm for the first time that evening, a thin needle of ice.
Not pain. Only stillness.
He repeated it silently.
Like a prayer.
Like an excuse.
Jacob rubbed the bridge of his nose.
— It's stuffy in here.
— No.
— I'm telling you, it's stuffy.
— It isn't the house.
Jacob looked up.
— What?
Simon realized he had said more aloud than he intended.
— A few more minutes, — he said evenly. — And they'll take full effect.
The silence after those words was almost absolute.
Even the rain seemed to recede.
Jacob stared at him, trying to assemble the words into meaning, but the meaning kept slipping away. The chemicals were already slowing the thing that had always worked fastest in him: reaction, the instant recognition of danger.
— What will take effect? — he asked.
Simon said nothing.
— Simon.
For the first time, his name came without mockery. Without "baby," without condescending warmth, without a hidden command. Just his name — wary, real.
Jacob leaned forward. His large hand settled over Simon's.
Simon flinched with his entire body.
The touch was gentle.
Not a grip. Not a blow. Not a display of strength. His fingers simply covered Simon's hand — warm, heavy, careful.
For three years, Simon had waited for something like this from those hands.
For three years, he had imagined that one day they would touch him without intending to hurt him. And now that it had happened, there was no room left inside him for joy. Only the panic of someone who had been .
— What are you doing? — he breathed.
Jacob frowned, as though he did not know himself.
— Trying to talk to you normally.
— Now?
— Yes, now. — His fingers tightened slightly. — I came because I wanted to tell you something.
Simon could not look away from their hands.
— What?
Jacob opened his mouth, then fell silent. The words seemed caught not on his tongue, but deeper, behind a forbidden door that had remained shut for years.
— No one knows about the locker room, — he said at last. — I didn't tell anyone.
Simon looked up.
— Why?
— Because it's none of their business.
— Whose is it?
Jacob looked at him for a long, heavy moment.
— Mine.
One word.
Possessive. Wrong. Almost what Simon wanted to hear.
Almost.
— I'm not a thing, — he whispered.
— I know.
— No. You don't.
Jacob was about to answer, but his face suddenly changed. His gaze lost focus. The fingers over Simon's hand loosened.
He sucked in a sharp breath and pressed his free hand to his temple.
— Damn…
His hand slipped away.
The room tilted.
Not violently — barely, as if the house had been lifted by a wave. Jacob blinked, expecting the walls to return to their proper places, but the fireplace drifted sideways while Simon's face remained a pale, motionless point at the center of smeared light.
He tried to stand.
His body answered late.
His knees straightened, but the floor was farther away than it should have been. Jacob swayed sideways; he grabbed the edge of the table, and the bottle fell, struck the floorboards, and rolled toward the fireplace. Dark foam spilled from its mouth. A whitish residue clung to the glass bottom where none should have been.
Understanding came at once.
Late — but at once.
Jacob looked from the bottle to Simon.
— You…
His voice sounded muffled, foreign.
Simon stood. Without hurry.
— Jacob, are you all right?
The question was spoken with such calm concern that the fear inside him instantly turned to rage.
— What did you give me?
He stepped toward Simon. The first step was almost steady. The second was not. The room jerked, the floor vanished beneath his right foot. Jacob still reached him and grabbed the front of his hoodie with both hands, yanking him closer.
Their faces were inches apart.
Before, that would have been enough to stop Simon's breathing. One tightening of Jacob's jaw, one movement of those strong fingers, and the old victim-body would have awakened and obediently gone still.
Now the fingers could barely hold on.
They still had strength, but no precision.
— What's happening to me? — Jacob growled. — I don't understand… what did you do?
For the first time, there was fear in his voice.
Not the brief sting he had smothered with a smirk in the car. Real fear. Animal fear. The fear of a man suddenly locked inside his own body, feeling the controls go dark one after another.
Simon looked at him and felt no triumph.
Only a strange, painful tenderness.
He raised a hand and touched Jacob's cheek.
Jacob jerked, but could no longer pull away.
— Easy, — Simon whispered. His thumb moved over Jacob's cheekbone — slowly, almost tenderly. — I told you. We're just going to talk.
— You put something… in it.
It was no longer a question.
Simon did not lie.
— Yes.
Such pure disbelief flared in Jacob's eyes, as though the betrayal was not in the bottle, not in the drug, not in the house in the middle of the forest — but in the fact that Simon, of all people, had been capable of it.
The one who always stayed silent.
The one who always endured.
The one who could be released against a wall without looking back, because he remained wherever he had been left.
— Why? — Jacob breathed.
Simon moved closer.
— So you wouldn't leave before the conversation was over.
— Psycho… — The word broke apart on his breath. — You fucking…
Jacob's knees buckled.
His grip on the hoodie disappeared. His body, which only a minute ago had loomed like a threat, suddenly became merely heavy — too large, too warm, falling helplessly forward.
Simon caught him.
The impact of Jacob's weight nearly knocked him off his feet. He wrapped his arms around Jacob's back, planted his feet against the floor, and slowly took the full weight of the man he had been unable to touch of his own will for three years.
Jacob's face came to rest against his shoulder.
His breath burned Simon's neck.
For one impossible second, it looked exactly like Simon's most secret fantasies: Jacob pressed against him with his entire body, his arms resting on Simon, with no distance between them, no witnesses, no world.
Simon closed his eyes.
— I've got you, — he whispered.
Jacob said something — indistinct, already far away. He tried to raise his head, but could not. With one final movement, his fingers weakly closed around the fabric at Simon's back, as if his body were still searching for support where his mind already understood that support and trap had become the same thing.
Simon slowly lowered them both onto the sofa.
He seated Jacob, supporting the back of his head. He removed the red-and-white jacket from his broad shoulders so the fabric would not pull at his neck, then folded it neatly beside him. Without it, Jacob looked younger. Not the king of campus, not the captain, not the man for whom hallways parted.
Just a sleeping boy.
Simon settled Jacob's head against his chest and ran his fingers through his short hair. Once. Again. So gently, as though trying to smooth away what he had just done.
Jacob could still hear.
Somewhere very far away, there were the fireplace, the rain, another heart beneath his ear. He wanted to force his eyes open. Wanted to strike, to stand, to reach the phone on the table. But his body no longer belonged to him. The last clear sensation was Simon's palm against the back of his head — careful, almost loving.
It was wrong.
And somehow unbearably peaceful.
— Don't worry, — Simon whispered into the darkness already closing around him. — I won't hurt you.
Jacob's fingers finally released.
Simon looked at the rough wooden chair by the fireplace.
At the duffel bag.
At the chains waiting patiently beneath a layer of blankets.
Then he lowered his gaze to Jacob's face again and touched his lips to Jacob's temple — barely, almost weightlessly.
— Sweet dreams, — he said.
The screen fades to black.
Continued in the next episode.